Presidency of the Council of Ministers (Italy)

The Presidency of the Council of Ministers (Italian: Presidenza del Consiglio dei ministri) is the administrative structure which supports the Prime Minister of Italy (referred to in Italian as the President of the Council of Ministers). It is thus the Italian equivalent of the . It contains those departments which carry out duties invested in the office of the Prime Minister. Duties invested in the Italian executive government generally are not administered by the Presidency, but by the individual ministries.

The creation of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers is comparatively recent and is closely connected with the acquisition of significant autonomy by the Prime Minister. For a long time, the Prime Minister was not very prominent in his own right, separate from the government and the individual ministries which he controlled. Thus, until 1960, the headquarters of the Presidency of the Council was in the Palazzo del Viminale - the same location as the Ministry of the Interior.

Throughout the period of the Kingdom of Italy, the Prime Minister used the Viminale to execute his will, and often held the position of Minister of the Interior concurrently. This relationship was so close that the Prime Minister's letterhead was the same as that of the Ministry of the Interior. During the fascist period, Mussolini used the Palazzo Venezia as his personal headquarters, but did not base his government there.

However, it was during Mussolini's government that the first regulations of government activity took place, with the passage of Royal Decree law no.1100 of 10 July 1924, relating to the cabinet of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. With the institution of the Italian Republic, it returned to the Viminale. In 1961, Palazzo Chigi came to be used as a headquarters for the government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had been based there up to this point was transferred to its current headquarters in the Palazzo della Farnesina. After this, the Presidency of the Council began to take shape, although not in an organic manner, since it lacked a law which regulated its whle operation. In 1988, the government of Ciriaco De Mita approved law no. 400, which regulated the Presidency. In 1999, under the government of Massimo D'Alema the re-organisation of the presidency was carried out with Decree law no.303 of 30 July 1999, part of the Bassanini reforms.

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