Background
Paolo Gentiloni comes from an aristocratic Roman family, the class that has provided courtiers for the city's respective Italian and Vatican governments for centuries.
Gentiloni was born in Rome in 1954.
Paolo Gentiloni comes from an aristocratic Roman family, the class that has provided courtiers for the city's respective Italian and Vatican governments for centuries.
Gentiloni was born in Rome in 1954.
He attended a Montessori Institute, where he became a friend of Agnese Moro, the daughter of Aldo Moro, a Christian Democratic leader, and Prime Minister. During the early 1970s, he attended the Classical Lyceum Torquato Tasso in Rome; he graduated in political sciences at the La Sapienza University. Gentiloni was a professional journalist before entering politics.
Professionally a journalist, Gentiloni entered the political world as a member of student movement led by Mario Capanna. Alongside an entry into politics, Gentiloni was actively seeking for better opportunities in journalism sector. He was even appointed the director of a Italian newspaper, La Nuova Ecologia. Paolo’s successful journalism led him to become acquainted with numerous political figures, including Francesco Rutelli.
Starting in 1993, Gentiloni ventured into mainstream politics by campaigning for Rutelli’s bid for Rome’s Mayor. As Rutelli won the election, Paolo was subsequently appointed as Jubilee and Tourism Councillor. After holding the office for a few years, he ran for a Parliamentary position. Having won people’s will, he successfully served as a Member of Parliament from 2001-2006. He was also the Chairman of Broadcasting Services Watchdog Committee from 2005 to 2006.
Leaving Parliamentary Position, Gentiloni served as the Minister of Communications for Romano Prodi’s government. In the meantime, he helped build foundation of the Democratic Party. Following Paolo’s 2008 re-election to the parliament, he held office for five years and even placed a bid for Mayor of Rome. Unfortunately, Gentiloni wasn’t already Rome’s first choice at that moment.
In 2013 general election, Paolo Gentiloni won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies. However, the following year, he entered Matteo Renzi’s administration cabinet as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. As a diplomat for Italian Government, Gentiloni said that Italy might not tolerate the presence of Islamic terrorism a few hours away.
Similarly, Gentiloni met diplomats from Mexico and Cuba in March 2015 to discuss bilateral ties. In December 2015, he also organized Rome peace conference which hosted Russia, US, UN, and Libya. Likewise, Paolo negotiated with the Dutch government to share term at UN Security Council.
As Matteo Renzi resigned from the post of Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni was the next best candidate to form a new government. So, under the request of the President, he took the leadership on 11 December 2016 and formed a coalition government of Democrats and Christian Democratic Popular Area. Following the formation of a new cabinet, Gentiloni won 368 out of 473 confidence votes in the Chamber of Deputies.
Since holding the office, he visited Paris to meet French counterpart, Francois Hollande. Likewise, he has also made a deal with Libyan authorities to halt migration.
On 28 December 2017 President Sergio Mattarella, after a meeting with Gentiloni, dissolved the Parliament, calling for new elections, which was held on March 4, 2018. Gentiloni remains in office, with all his powers, until a new cabinet is formed. During the electoral campaign, many prominent members of the centre-left like Romano Prodi, Walter Veltroni and Carlo Calenda asked Renzi to renounce his candidacy and to select Gentiloni as the centre-left candidate for the premiership. Renzi had always denied these proposals stating that the electoral law did not require to appoint a candidate for Prime Minister and that he was elected secretary of the party with almost 70% of votes, thus due to the party's statute the candidate was him.
In the election the centre-right alliance, in which Matteo Salvini's League emerged as the main political force, won a plurality of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate, while the anti-establishment Five Star Movement led by Luigi Di Maio became the party with the largest number of votes and the centre-left coalition, led by Renzi, came third.
However, due to the largely proportional electoral law, no political group or party won an outright majority, resulting in a hung parliament.
In his electoral constituency in the city centre of Rome, Gentiloni won with 42.06% of votes against the centre-right candidate Luciano Ciocchetti (30.85%) and the Five Star, Agiolino Cirulli, who gained 16.73%
Paolo Gentiloni is widely considered a Christian leftist and progressive politician. Despite having started his political career within the extra-parliamentary far-left movements, Gentiloni later assumed more Christian democratic and social liberal views. Gentiloni is in favour of the recognition of civil unions for same-sex couples and stepchild adoptions, a situation which occurs when at least one parent has children, from a previous relationship, that are not genetically related to the other parent. He also supports the advance healthcare directive.
While traditionally supporting the social integration of immigrants, since 2017 Paolo Gentiloni has adopted a more critical approach on the issue. Inspired by Marco Minniti, his Interior Minister, the government promoted stricter policies regarding immigration and public security. These policies resulted in broad criticism from the left-wing Democrats and Progressives, PD's partners in the cabinet which later left the government's majority, as well as left-leaning intellectuals like Roberto Saviano and Gad Lerner. In August Lerner, who was among the founding members of the Democratic Party, left the party altogether, due to government's new immigration policies.
Gentiloni is considered by many journalists, politicians and commentators a skilled political mediator and well-wisher of a collective leadership, based on consociationalism and power-sharing, very different from the overflowing political style of his predecessor and party mate, Matteo Renzi.
According to public opinion surveys in December 2017, after one year of government, Gentiloni's approval rating was 44%, the second highest rating after that of President Sergio Mattarella, and far higher than the other prominent politicians; moreover his approval rating has increased since he came into office. After the 2018 general election, Gentiloni's approval rating rose to 52%, higher than every other political leader and followed by League's leader Matteo Salvini.
In the 2001 general election, Gentiloni was elected as a Member of Parliament and started his national political career. In 2002 he was a founding member of the Christian leftist The Daisy party, being the party's communications spokesman for five years. From 2005 until 2006, he was Chairman of the Broadcasting Services Watchdog Committee; the committee oversees the activity of state broadcaster RAI, which is publicly funded. He was reelected in the 2006 election as a member of The Olive Tree, the political coalition led by the Bolognese economist Romano Prodi. After the centre-left's victory, Gentiloni served as Minister for Communications in Prodi's second government from 2006 until 2008.
He was one of the 45 members of the national founding committee of the Democratic Party in 2007, formed by the union of the democratic socialists Democrats of the Left and the Christian leftist The Daisy. Gentiloni was re-elected in the 2008 general election, which saw the victory of the conservative coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi. In this legislature he was a member of the Committee regarding Transports and Telecommunications.
Quotes from others about the person
"Paolo is a very reserved person," says Stefano Menichini, a journalist who has known Mr Gentiloni for almost 30 years.
"There is never gossip about him," he continues, "Nothing. You will never see him in famous holiday spots - he actually goes to the mountains in Austria."
"He is just Renzi's puppet," says Manlio di Stefano, a Five Star member of parliament, "They needed someone to put there and give Renzi the time to wipe his image after the referendum disaster."
Gentiloni is a married man. He tied the knot with Emanuela Mauro in 1988. The couple has remained together ever since i.e. around three decades.