Giuseppe Conte

Biography

Giuseppe Conte was born in 1964 in Volturara Appula, a small town near Foggia in Apulia, the son of a municipal clerk and a primary school teacher. He studied law at Sapienza University of Rome, graduating with honours in 1988, qualified as a lawyer in 1992 and spent periods studying and researching abroad. He built an academic career teaching private law at several Italian universities, including the University of Florence, and from 2013 sat on the self-governing body of Italy's administrative judges, serving as its vice president.

Although he had never held political office, Conte was put forward by the Five Star Movement and the League after the inconclusive 2018 election as a neutral head for their coalition, and he was sworn in as prime minister on 1 June 2018. When the League withdrew its support in August 2019, he resigned but was asked to stay on at the head of a new coalition of the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party, becoming the first prime minister to lead successive governments with right-wing and then left-wing partners.

His second government faced the COVID-19 pandemic, which struck Italy early and hard; in March 2020 it imposed the first nationwide lockdown in the Western world, and in July 2020 Conte joined other European leaders in agreeing the Next Generation EU recovery package. After Matteo Renzi's Italia Viva left the coalition in January 2021, Conte won confidence votes but lacked a Senate majority, and he resigned in February 2021, making way for Mario Draghi.

Conte joined the Five Star Movement shortly afterwards and was elected its president in August 2021. In July 2022 the movement's refusal to back a government decree helped bring down Draghi's cabinet, and at the September 2022 election Conte won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.