Sergio Mattarella
Sergio Mattarella has been President of Italy since 2015, and in 2022 became only the second person re-elected to the office, having explicitly said he did not want a second term. Born in Palermo in 1941, he is the son of Bernardo Mattarella, a Christian Democrat minister, and the brother of Piersanti Mattarella, the president of Sicily who was murdered by the Mafia in January 1980 — Sergio was present and held his dying brother in the car. He was a professor of parliamentary law and entered politics after that killing, sitting as a Christian Democrat deputy from 1983. As minister for relations with parliament he resigned in 1990 over the Mammì broadcasting law, which entrenched Silvio Berlusconi's television holdings. He later served as education minister and defence minister, and drafted the 1993 electoral law known as the Mattarellum. He was a constitutional court judge from 2011 until his election. The Italian presidency is normally ceremonial, but it holds real reserve powers in a country whose governments rarely last, and Mattarella has used them. He refused a eurosceptic finance minister in 2018, provoking a constitutional confrontation; he installed Mario Draghi as prime minister in 2021 to manage the pandemic and the EU recovery funds; and he has overseen the appointment of several administrations across a fragmented parliament. Parliament re-elected him in January 2022 after eight ballots failed to produce any other candidate, a deadlock that reflected the parties' inability to agree rather than his own ambition. He has been a consistent defender of the constitution and of Italy's European commitments.
- Lived: 1941 CE – ?
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: President of Italy (2015-present)
