Paolo Gentiloni Silveri (; born 22 November 1954) is an Italian politician who was European Commissioner for Economy in the von der Leyen Commission from 1 December 2019 to 30 November 2024. He had previously served as prime minister of Italy from December 2016 to June 2018.
After a lengthy career in local politics, Gentiloni was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2001. He served in the Cabinet under Romano Prodi as Minister of Communications from 2006 to 2008. In 2007, he was one of the senior founding members of the Democratic Party, and went on to become party president from 2019 to 2020. Gentiloni later served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2014 to 2016 in the Cabinet of Matteo Renzi. Following Renzi's resignation in the wake of a failed constitutional referendum, the Democratic Party held discussions on his replacement. Eventually, Gentiloni won support from his colleagues, and President Sergio Mattarella appointed him Prime Minister on 12 December 2016.
Despite being considered a caretaker prime minister upon his appointment, during his time in office Gentiloni successfully delivered major reforms that had been delayed for many years, including the implementation of the advance healthcare directive, the reform of the voluntary sector and the passage of a new electoral law. He also introduced stricter rules on immigration and social security, in an attempt to counteract the European migration crisis. In foreign policy, Gentiloni built on his time as foreign minister by projecting a strong Europeanist stance, whilst at the same time building close relations with the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, and notably overseeing a normalisation of Italian relations with India after years of tensions. Gentiloni resigned as Prime Minister following the 2018 election. In September 2019, he was nominated by the Conte Government to become Italy's new European Commissioner, and was given the key portfolio of overseeing the European Union Economy.
Early life and family A descendant of Count Gentiloni Silveri, Paolo Gentiloni is related to the Italian politician Vincenzo Ottorino Gentiloni, chamberlain of Pope Pius X, who was the leader of the conservative Catholic Electoral Union and a key ally of the long-time prime minister Giovanni Giolitti. If the Kingdom of Italy still existed, Gentiloni would have the titles of Nobile of Filottrano, Nobile of Cingoli, and Nobile of Macerata.
Gentiloni was born in Rome in 1954, during his childhood 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 Sapienza University of Rome. Gentiloni was a professional journalist before entering politics.
In 1989 he married Emanuela Mauro, an architect; they have no children. Gentiloni speaks fluent English, French and German.
Early political career During the 1970s, Paolo Gentiloni was a member of the Student Movement (Movimento Studentesco), a far-left youth organization led by Mario Capanna; when Capanna founded the Proletarian Democracy party, Gentiloni did not follow him, and joined the Workers' Movement for Socialism (Movimento Lavoratori per il Socialismo; MLS), a far-left Maoist group, of which he became the regional secretary for Lazio. In 1981 Gentiloni followed the MLS into the Proletarian Unity Party (Partito di Unità Proletaria; PdUP), remaining a member until its dissolution three years later.
Gentiloni slowly abandoned far-left ideals, sharing more moderate views and becoming particularly involved in green politics and ecologism. During those years he became a close friend of Chicco Testa who helped Gentiloni to become director of La Nuova Ecologia ("The New Ecology"), the official newspaper of Legambiente. As director of this ecologist newspaper he met the young leader of Federation of the Greens, Francesco Rutelli and became, along with Roberto Giachetti, Michele Anzaldi and Filippo Sensi, a member of the so-called "Rutelli boys", a group formed by Rutelli's closest advisors and supporters.
Rome City Council In 1993 he became Rutelli's spokesman during his campaign to become Mayor of Rome; after the election, which saw a strong victory by Rutelli against Gianfranco Fini, leader of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, Gentiloni was appointed Great Jubilee and Tourism Councillor in the Rome City Council. Rutelli was reelected in 1997, with 985,000 popular votes, the highest share in the history of the city.
Gentiloni held his office until January 2001, when Rutelli resigned to become the centre-left candidate to the premiership in the 2001 general election. However Rutelli was soundly defeated by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi with 35.1% of votes against 49.6%.
Member of Parliament and Minister 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.Profilo personale. 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.Giada Zampano (31 October 2014), Italy’s Prime Minister Names Paolo Gentiloni as Foreign Minister The Wall Street Journal.
As minister Gentiloni planned to reform the Italian television system, with the defeat of the Gasparri Law, the previous reform proposed by the centre-right lawmaker Maurizio Gasparri. The reform provided, between other things, the reduction of advertising. However, in 2007, the government suffered a crisis and lost its majority, so the reform had never been approved. The "Gentiloni Reform" bill of 12 October 2006, established the existence of a market dominance where a subject exceeded 45% of advertising sales and abolished the "integrated communication system" (SIC) introduced by the Gasparri Law. The law also lowered the maximum advertising threshold for TV from 18% to 16%, to encourage redistribution, and provided for the transfer to digital of one network each for RAI and Mediaset by 2009, thus freeing up frequencies and imposing the obligation to sell (Europa 7 affair). However, the bill will not be approved.
In May 2007 a second reform text was launched that concerns only the RAI (Senate Act no. 1588/2007). Among the main aspects, the property should have passed from the Ministry of Economy to a foundation; there would also have been a separation between TV financed by the fee and TV financed by advertising, and the rules for appointing the board of directors would have changed. However, the reform will not be approved.
He was one of the 45 members of the national founding committee of the Democratic Party in 2007, formed by the union of the social democrats 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 Transport and Telecommunications.
On 6 April 2013 he ran in the primary election to select the center-left candidate for Mayor of Rome, placing third, with 14% of votes, after Ignazio Marino (51%), who became mayor, and the journalist David Sassoli, who gained 28%. After the defeat in the primary election, many political commentators believed that Gentiloni's career as a prominent member of the centre-left was over.
However, Gentiloni was elected again to the Chamber of Deputies in the 2013 general election, as part of the centre-left coalition Italy. Common Good led by Pier Luigi Bersani, Secretary of the PD. In 2013, after Bersani's resignation as secretary, Gentiloni supported the Mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, in the Democratic Party leadership election.
Minister of Foreign Affairs
On 31 October 2014 Gentiloni was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi; Gentiloni succeeded Federica Mogherini, who became High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. He took office two months before Italy's rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union ended in December 2014. At the time of his appointment, Gentiloni had not been mentioned in political circles as a candidate. Renzi had reportedly wanted to replace Mogherini with another woman, to preserve gender parity in his 16-member cabinet. Moreover, Gentiloni was not known as a specialist in international diplomacy.
As foreign minister, Gentiloni tried to trace an intermediate path for Italy in the scenario of multiple crises that surrounds it, from the wars in Libya and Syria to tensions with Russia. Gentiloni showed a strong closeness to his US counterpart John Kerry and kept open a channel of dialogue with the Russian Sergei Lavrov.
On 13 February 2015, during an interview on Sky TG24, Gentiloni stated that "if needed, Italy will be ready to fight in Libya against the Islamic State, because the Italian government can not accept the idea that there is an active terrorist threat only a few hours from Italy by boat." The following day Gentiloni was threatened by ISIL, which accused him of being a crusader, minister of an enemy country.
In March 2015 Gentiloni visited Mexico and Cuba and met First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Raúl Castro, ensuring the Italian support for the normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States.
On 11 July 2015, a car bomb exploded outside the Italian consulate in the Egyptian capital Cairo, resulting in at least one death and four people injured; the Islamic State claimed responsibility. On the same day Gentiloni stated that "Italy will not be intimidated" and would continue the fight against terrorism.
In December 2015, Gentiloni hosted a peace conference in Rome with the representatives from both governments of Libya involved in the civil war, but also from the United Nations, the United States and Russia.
As foreign minister, Gentiloni had to confront various abductions of Italian citizens. In January 2015, he negotiated the release of Vanessa Marzullo and Greta Ramelli, two Italian students and activists who had been held hostage by Syrian terrorists for 168 days.Liam Moloney (January 16, 2015), Italy Says Against Paying Ransom for Hostages Wall Street Journal.
Another high-profile case was the murder of Giulio Regeni, an Italian Cambridge University graduate student killed in Cairo following his abduction on 25 January 2016; He was a Ph.D. student researching Egypt's independent trade unions. Regeni's mutilated and half-naked corpse was found in a ditch alongside the Cairo-Alexandria highway on the outskirts of Cairo on 3 February 2016. His recovered body showed signs of extreme torture like contusions and abrasions, extensive bruising from kicks, punches, and assault with a stick, more than two dozen bone fractures, a brain hemorrhage and a broken cervical vertebra, which ultimately caused death. The Egyptian police was strongly suspected of involvement in his murder in Europe, although Egypt's media and government deny this, alleging secret undercover agents belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt carried out the crime in order to embarrass the Egyptian government and destabilize relations between Italy and Egypt.