Enrico Letta

Biography

Enrico Letta was born in Pisa in 1966 into a family of academics and politicians; his uncle Gianni Letta was a close adviser to Silvio Berlusconi. He studied in Pisa and began his political life in Christian Democracy, serving from 1991 to 1995 as president of the Youth of the European People's Party. In 1993-1994 he was chief of staff to Foreign Minister Beniamino Andreatta, and after the old party collapsed he joined the Italian People's Party, becoming its deputy secretary.

In 1998, at 32, he became Minister for Community Policies, the youngest cabinet minister in postwar Italy, and from 1999 to 2001 he was Minister of Industry. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2001 for The Daisy, sat in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2006, and from 2006 to 2008 was Secretary of the Council of Ministers under Romano Prodi. A founder of the Democratic Party in 2007, he finished third in its first leadership primary and served as deputy secretary from 2009 to 2013.

After the deadlocked 2013 election, President Giorgio Napolitano asked Letta to form a grand coalition of the centre-left, the centre-right and centrists, and he became prime minister on 28 April 2013. His government abolished public funding of parties and launched the Mare Nostrum naval rescue operation after the Lampedusa shipwreck. It survived Berlusconi's withdrawal in late 2013, but when the new party leader Matteo Renzi challenged him in February 2014, Letta lost his party's backing and resigned.

Letta left politics to become dean of the School of International Affairs at Sciences Po in Paris. In March 2021 he returned as secretary of the Democratic Party and was elected to the Chamber for Siena that October. He led the party into the 2022 general election, which the right won, and stepped down as leader in 2023. He left parliament in December 2024 to become a dean at IE University in Madrid.