Italy Leaders Stats

After less than a year in the job, Enrico Letta resigned as prime minister in February 2014, after his Democratic Party (PD) voted in favour of an urgent change of government to push through reforms.

President Giorgio Napolitano then asked PD leader and mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, to form a new government.

Mr Letta was named prime minister in April 2013 after inconclusive elections at a time when Italy was mired in recession.

He forged a coalition with former premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservatives - an unusual alliance of bitter rivals - as well as centrists led by former prime minister Mario Monti.

The creation of the coalition at first appeared to pave the way for yet another political comeback for Mr Berlusconi, who was forced to resign in 2011 as Italy slid deeper into the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis.

Mr Letta's appointment of a protege of Mr Berlusconi, Angelino Alfano, as his deputy initially raised suspicions that the scandal-tainted billionaire tycoon would continue to call the shots from the sidelines.

However, the former prime minister's accumulating criminal convictions cast a shadow over the future of the coalition, and the Supreme Court's upholding of a custodial sentence for Mr Berlusconi in the first of these cases in August 2013 caused further tremors within the government.

Mr Berlusconi responded to moves to expel him from parliament and deprive him of his immunity from arrest by attempting to bring down the government. This move backfired when Mr Alfano refused to follow the instructions of his former mentor and formed his own breakaway centre-right faction.

But even after having been finally flung out of parliament in November, Mr Berlusconi continued to insist that he would remain a force in Italian politics as the leader of Forza Italia - a party that still enjoys considerable electoral support.

Mr Letta, aged 46 at the time of his inauguration, is a moderate with a reputation as a political bridge-builder.

On taking office said he would act fast to reverse an austerity policy he argued was killing Italy and called on Europe to become a motor for growth.

But tensions within his own party over the pace of reform and differences over economic policy came to a head after Matteo Renzi was elected leader of the PD in December 2013. Mr Renzi forced a showdown in which the PD backed his vision of a new government that could implement "profound change" and get Italy "out of the quagmire". Mr Letta had no choice but to step down.