Carlo Calenda (born 9 April 1973) is an Italian business executive and politician. On 2 May 2013, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Economic Development in the government of Enrico Letta, and was later confirmed in that post in the cabinet of Letta's successor, Matteo Renzi.
On 20 January 2016, Renzi appointed him Italy's Permanent Representative to the European Union, an office he took up on March 21 that year. This appointment was criticised by both the opposition and Italian diplomats, because the office of Permanent Representative had always been held by a diplomat and not by a politician such as Calenda.
Early life and business career
Calenda was born in Rome in 1973. He is the son of Fabio Calenda, a journalist, and Cristina Comencini, a film director and screenwriter, and the grandson of Luigi Comencini, a popular director of Italian comedy movies, and Giulia Grifeo di Partanna, descended from an ancient aristocratic family from Sicily.
In 1984, at the age of eleven years, he played the lead role in the Italian television miniseries Cuore, directed by his grandfather, Luigi Comencini; his voice was dubbed by Giorgio Borghetti. During his adolescence, his aristocratic background did not prevent him from joining the Italian Communist Youth Federation (FGCI).
After an extremely unsuccessful school career (he flunked the third year of his Liceo, and failed 2 and then 4 subjects in the first two years at the famous Liceo Mamiani in Rome), he managed to get his B.A. without Laude in law at the La Sapienza University in Rome. Once graduated, thanks to his powerful family's ties, he worked in various finance companies until 1998, when he became a manager of Ferrari under the presidency of Luca Cordero di Montezemolo. In the early 2000s he became the marketing manager of Sky Italia. From 2004 to 2008 Calenda served as assistant to the then president of Confindustria, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo.
Political career
At 14, despite his aristocratic and upper-class background, Calenda joined the youth of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).
In 2009, Calenda was appointed political coordinator of Future Italy, a liberal centrist think tank founded by Montezemolo.
In 2012, he joined Civic Choice, the liberal political party of incumbent Prime Minister Mario Monti. Calenda ran in the 2013 general election, but failed to win a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.
Minister of Economic Development
On 10 May 2016, following the resignation of the incumbent minister Federica Guidi, Calenda was appointed Minister of Economic Development. Calenda continued as minister in the government of Paolo Gentiloni, who succeeded Renzi when he resigned on 12 December 2016 as Prime Minister following the constitutional referendum.
Before his nomination, Calenda was widely seen as a strong supporter of free market and globalization, and he often expressed his positive view about TTIP, a proposed trade agreement between the European Union and the United States, with the aim of promoting trade and multilateral economic growth. However, his tenure as minister was characterized by his opposition to foreign multinational corporations and his defence of Italian workers. His policies became particularly evident in January 2018 when the Brazilian company Embraco, a subsidiary of the US multinational Whirlpool, announced an offshoring to shift its production from Turin to Slovakia. After weeks of tensions and protests, the Italian government and Embraco reached a deal to postpone the relocation and suspend the layoffs, permitting to reach a better agreement for workers during the following year.
On 6 March 2018, two days after the 2018 general election, which saw the defeat of Renzi's Democratic Party and a strong showing of populist forces like the Five Star Movement and the Lega, Calenda announced he would join the Democrats, stating that "we must not form a new party but work to uplift the one that already exists." He also added that the PD must be reorganized as a real leftist force and must not support any cabinet led by populist parties.