Matteo Renzi

In 1999, Renzi married Agnese Landini, who is a teacher by profession. The couple has three children named Francesco, Emanuele and Ester. He is a practicing Catholic and attends mass regularly. The family also takes active part in the Association of Italian Catholic Guides and Scouts.

Matteo Renzi was born on January 11, 1975, in Florence, to Tiziano Renzi and Laura Bovoli. Tiziano is a businessman and a municipal councilor at Rignano sull’Arno. The couple has four children, out of which Matteo was born second. The other children are Samuele, Matilde and Benedetta.

Matteo spent the initial years in Rignano sull’Arno, a commune located 20 km southeast to Florence. Later, he attended Liceo classico, known as the country’s oldest secondary schooling type, in Florence. During his school years he joined the ‘Associazione Guide e Scouts Cattolici Italiani’ as a scout. This was also the time he began taking interest in politics.

After passing out from Liceo classico, Matteo joined the University of Florence and graduated in 1999, with a degree in law.

Later, he joined his family business. It was a marketing company and he was put in charge of coordinating the circulation of La Nazion, a Tuscan newspaper based at Florence.

Matteo Renzi started taking interest in politics while he was still a student. In 1996, he co-founded a committee that supported Romano Prodi in his bid to become the Prime Minister in 1996 general election.

In the same year, he joined Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI), a progressive, democratic party with centrist view. In 1999, he became its Provincial Secretary. In 2001, as PPI merged into Democrazia è Libertà – La Margherita (DL), commonly known as Daisy, Matteo became its member.

In 2004, Matteo was elected as the Secretary of Florence Province. Not yet thirty, he was the youngest person to be ever elected to the post of president of any Italian province. During his presidency, he reduced taxes and at the same time trimmed down the number of employees at the Province.

In 2007, DL and other center-left parties merged to form Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) and Matteo became its member. Two years later, he declared he would contest the election for the position of Mayor of Florence. He won the election, held in June 2009, with 48% of the votes.

As the Mayor of Florence, he decreased the number of councilors by half and increased the spending on social welfare. Education was also another sector, which received his attention. He not only increased expenditure on it, but also reduced the waiting list in the kindergarten by 90%.

Matteo Renzi was formally appointed as the Prime Minister on February 22, 2014. On assuming office, his first priority was to reform labor laws. According to the new government such reforms were essential to improve Italian economy.

On March 12, 2014, his cabinet issued a decree on fixed-term contracts and a bill, which proposed major reforms to the Italian labor market. The latter, called the Jobs Act, became a law by December 3, 2014.

The guidelines for the reform of the Public Administration were presented on April 30, 2014 which was later approved by the Cabinet on June 13, 2014. In addition, he appointed many women as the head of state owned companies. It was also something novel in Italy.

As austerity measure, he put 1500 government owned luxury cars on auction. He also took measures to implement stalled projects and to simply the official procedures. By May 2015, his efforts began to bear fruit and Italy experienced 0.3% growth, thus signaling an end of long recession.

Renzi also undertook constitutional reforms and decreased the power of the Senate. However, his biggest challenge lies in tackling the high level of illegal immigration from Syria and Libya. Many of these immigrants have to be rescued from the sea.