Enrico Letta

Enrico Letta (Italian: [enˈriːko ˈlɛtta]; born 20 August 1966) is an Italian politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy from April 2013 to February 2014, leading a grand coalition of centre-left and centre-right parties. He later was the leader of the Democratic Party (PD) from March 2021 to March 2023.

After working as an academic, Letta entered politics in 1998 when he was appointed to the Cabinet as Minister for the Community Policies, a role he held until 1999 when he was promoted to become Minister of Industry, Commerce, and Crafts. In 2001, he left the Cabinet upon his election to the Chamber of Deputies. From 2006 to 2008, he was appointed Secretary of the Council of Ministers. In 2007, Letta was one of the senior founding members of the Democratic Party, and in 2009 was elected as its Deputy Secretary.

After the 2013 Italian general election produced an inconclusive result, and following negotiations between party leaders, President Giorgio Napolitano gave him the task of forming a national unity government (Letta Cabinet), composed of Letta's PD, the centre-right The People of Freedom (PdL), and the centrist Civic Choice, in order to mitigate the economic and social crises engulfing Italy as a result of the Great Recession. Following an agreement between parties, Letta resigned as PD Deputy Secretary and was appointed Prime Minister of Italy on 28 April 2013. His government tried to promote economic recovery by securing a funding deal from the European Union to alleviate youth unemployment and abolished the party subsidies, something seen as a watershed moment for Italian politics, which for years had depended upon public funds. Letta also faced the early stages of the 2015 European migrant crisis, including the 2013 Lampedusa migrant shipwreck, the deadliest shipwreck in the recent history of the Mediterranean Sea; in response, Letta implemented Operation Mare Nostrum to patrol the maritime borders and rescue migrants.