The Prime Minister of Italy, officially the President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic (Italian: Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri) is the head of government of the Italian Republic.
While the office is similar to those in most other parliamentary systems, the Italian prime minister has less authority than some of his counterparts. The prime minister is not authorized to request the dissolution of the Parliament of Italy or to dismiss ministers, and must receive a vote of approval from the Council of Ministers—which holds effective executive power—to execute most political activities.
The office was established by Articles 92 through to 96 of the current Constitution of Italy. The prime minister is appointed by the President of the Republic after each general election. Commonly referred to in Italy as premier, the right title of the office holder is Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri, or just Presidente del Consiglio. The formal Italian order of precedence lists the office as being ceremonially the fourth most important Italian state office.
Famous quotes containing the words prime minister, prime, minister and/or italy:
“If one had to worry about one’s actions in respect of other people’s ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“No woman in my time will be Prime Minister or Chancellor or Foreign Secretary—not the top jobs. Anyway I wouldn’t want to be Prime Minister. You have to give yourself 100%.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the fraught bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)