Sergio Mattarella, Italian lawyer, judge, and politician, 12th President of Italy
Sergio Mattarella (Italian pronunciation: [ˈsɛrdʒo mattaˈrɛlla]; born 23 July 1941) is an Italian politician, jurist, academic, and lawyer who has served as the president of Italy since 2015.
A Christian leftist politician, Mattarella was a leading member of the Christian Democracy party from the early 1980s until its dissolution. He served as Minister for Parliamentary Relations from 1987 to 1989, and Minister of Education from 1989 to 1990. In 1994, Mattarella was among the founders of the Italian People's Party (PPI), serving as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy from 1998 to 1999, and Minister of Defence from 1999 to 2001. He joined The Daisy in 2002 and was one of the founders of the Democratic Party (PD) in 2007, leaving it when he retired from politics in 2008. He also served as a judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy from 2011 to 2015.On 31 January 2015, Mattarella was elected to the presidency on the fourth ballot, supported by the centre-left coalition majority led by the PD and centrist parties. He was re-elected for a second term on 29 January 2022, becoming the second Italian president to be re-elected, the first being his predecessor Giorgio Napolitano. As of 2022, four prime ministers have served under his presidency, among them Matteo Renzi, then the PD's leader and main sponsor of his presidential candidacy, Paolo Gentiloni, a leading member of the PD who succeeded Renzi after his resignation in 2016, Giuseppe Conte, at that time an independent politician who governed both with right-wing and left-wing coalitions in two consecutive cabinets, and Mario Draghi, a banker and former president of the European Central Bank, who was appointed to lead a national unity government following Conte's resignation.