Paolo Gentiloni

Biography

Paolo Gentiloni Silveri was born in Rome in 1954 into a family of the minor nobility. He studied political science at Sapienza University and worked as a journalist. As a student he belonged to far-left groups, the Workers' Movement for Socialism and then the Proletarian Unity Party, before moving towards environmentalism and editing La Nuova Ecologia, the paper of Legambiente.

Through that work he joined the circle of Francesco Rutelli, serving as his spokesman in the 1993 Rome mayoral race and then as the city's councillor for the Jubilee and tourism until 2001. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2001, he helped found The Daisy and later the Democratic Party, chaired the parliamentary committee overseeing RAI and was minister of communications in Romano Prodi's second government from 2006 to 2008.

Matteo Renzi made him foreign minister in October 2014. When Renzi resigned after losing the December 2016 constitutional referendum, Gentiloni became prime minister, keeping the same coalition. His government passed a living-will law and the Rosatellum electoral law, tightened migration policy with deals with Libya and Tunisia, and hosted the G7 summit at Taormina in 2017; he stayed in office until June 2018.

He was president of the Democratic Party in 2019-2020 and, nominated by Giuseppe Conte's government, served as European Commissioner for the Economy from December 2019 to November 2024.