Matteo Renzi

Matteo Renzi (matˈtɛːo ˈrɛntsi; born 11 January 1975) is an Italian politician who served as the Prime Minister of Italy from February 2014 until December 2016. He has been an Italian Senator for Florence since 2018. After serving as the President of the Province of Florence from 2004 to 2009 and the Mayor of Florence from 2009 to 2014, Renzi was elected Secretary of the Democratic Party, holding this role from 2013 to 2018, with a brief interruption in 2017. He resigned as Party Secretary following defeat in the 2018 election. In September 2019, he left the PD, founding Italia Viva, his own liberal movement. At the age of 39 years and 42 days upon assuming office, Renzi is the youngest person to have served as Italian Prime Minister (52 days younger than Benito Mussolini, who took office in 1922) and was at the time the youngest leader in the G7. He was also the first serving Mayor to become Prime Minister. Renzi was sometimes described as the de facto leader of the Party of European Socialists, in opposition to the European People's Party associated with Angela Merkel; the two leaders were together often referred to as Merkenzi. In 2014, the American magazine Fortune ranked Renzi as the third most influential person under 40 in the world, and Foreign Policy listed him as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. Moreover, Renzi is nicknamed il Rottamatore (the Scrapper) due to his ambition of renovating the Italian political establishment. After the rejection of his constitutional reform in the December 2016 referendum, Renzi formally resigned as Prime Minister on 12 December; his Foreign Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, was appointed his replacement. Renzi has been described as a centrist and as a liberal by political observers. While in power, Renzi's government implemented numerous reforms, including changes to the electoral system, a relaxation of labour and employment laws with the intention of boosting economic growth, a thorough reformation of the public administration, the simplification of civil trials, the introduction of same-sex civil unions and the abolition of many small taxes.

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