Sergio Mattarella is the President of the Republic of Italy. He was born in Palermo in 1941. In 1964 he obtained a summa con laude Law Degree from “La Sapienza” University. He was admitted to the Palermo Bar Association in 1967. He taught parliamentary law at the Law School of the University of Palermo until 1983.

In 1983 he was elected to Parliament for the Christian Democracy Party in the western Sicily constituency and remained a member of the Chamber of Deputies until 2008. From July 1987 to July 1989 he was Minister for Relations with Parliament. He was Minister of Education from July 1989 to July 1990.

He became Deputy Prime Minister in October 1998 and Minister of Defence from December 1999 to the June 2001 elections. During his mandate, laws were enacted to abolish conscription and to turn the Carabinieri into an autonomous armed force. During that period, Italy strongly supported the establishment of the European Security and Defence Policy, which led to the creation of the first European Army Corps.

On 5 October 2011 he was elected Constitutional Judge by Parliament and was sworn in as a member of the Constitutional Court on 11 October 2011. He was elected twelfth President of the Republic on 31 January 2015.

The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Assessment Exercise, the Institute was ranked first for research in European Studies in the United Kingdom. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009. 

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