What Happens To Mario Draghi After He Leaves The ECB?

A book looks at Draghi’s tenure at the ECB— and what the future holds for him back home after he leaves Frankfurt

The months leading up to the end of Mario Draghi’s eight-year leadership of the European Central Bank eerily resembled its start: Italy on the brink of economic chaos, investors questioning its capacity to support a huge debt mountain, and the risk of crashing out of the single currency becoming something more than just a remote possibility. Even the relative stability of a new government that in September replaced a caustic coalition can’t overcome the impression of an unstable Italy. For the ECB president, his home country has been a constant headache. The fact that—with the exception of Greece—no other country has done as badly in the single currency as Italy is just part of the reason.

Gross domestic product per person has fallen more than 10% since 2011, unemployment is stuck near 10%. The country’s cherished position as Europe’s second-largest manufacturing powerhouse is threatened by France. Meanwhile, the banking system, which took pride in weathering the global financial crisis without needing a bailout, emerged severely weakened from years of low or nonexistent growth, is still reeling from years of recession, and hasn’t been able to reform.

Throughout all this, Italy’s political and social cohesion has visibly deteriorated. To gauge the degree of instability, one simply needs to look at the list of prime ministers—Silvio Berlusconi, Mario Monti, Enrico Letta, Matteo Renzi, Paolo Gentiloni, Giuseppe Conte—and finance ministers— Giulio Tremonti, Monti, Vittorio Grilli, Fabrizio Saccomanni, Pier Carlo Padoan, Giovanni Tria, and Roberto Gualtieri—who have represented the country in Brussels and on the international stage while Draghi held his post in Frankfurt. He’s been in office continuously longer than any of those Italian officials, a double-edged distinction for a public figure in the country. Who knows what might be asked of him when he returns?