[4] After a lengthy career as an academic economist in Italy, Draghi worked for the World Bank in Washington, D.C., throughout the 1980s, and in 1991 returned to Rome to become director general of the Italian Treasury.

[22] On 21 July, Draghi resigned for a second time following the failure of the confidence vote to pass with an absolute majority due to the withdrawals of M5S, Lega, and FI.

During these years, he was also a board member of several Italian banks and corporations, like Eni, Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro and Istituto Mobiliare Italiano.

[47] On 5 August 2011, he made a contribution to domestic political debate when, together with the ECB President Jean Claude Trichet, he published a notable letter to the Italian Government of Silvio Berlusconi to recommend a series of economic measures that should urgently be implemented in Italy.

[48] Draghi had for years been mentioned as a possible successor to Jean-Claude Trichet, whose term as president of the European Central Bank was due to end in October 2011.

[42][56] As a member of the Group of Thirty, founded by the Rockefeller Foundation, he was accused in Der Spiegel, Tagesschau.de and Die Welt of having a conflict of interest as president of the ECB.

Draghi's ECB also promptly repealed the final two interest rate hikes of Trichet's term, stating this would ease the continuing European sovereign debt crisis.

In February 2012, Nobel Prize laureate in economics, Joseph Stiglitz argued that on the issue of the impending Greek debt restructuring, the ECB's insistence that it should be "voluntary", as opposed to a default agreed by Greek authorities, would be "a gift" to the financial institutions that sold credit default insurance on that debt, a position Stiglitz argued was a moral hazard.

[60] In March 2012, a second, larger round of ECB loans to EU banks was initiated, this time called the Long-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO).

One commentator, Matthew Lynn, saw the ECB's injection of funds, along with quantitative easing from the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, as feeding increases in oil prices in 2011 and 2012.

[61] In July 2012, in the midst of renewed fears about sovereigns in the eurozone, Draghi stated in a panel discussion that, under his leadership, the ECB "is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro.

"[62] This statement was heavily reported throughout the EU and the world's financial markets, and initially led to a steady decline in bond yields (borrowing costs) for eurozone countries, in particular Spain, Italy and France.

Beginning in 2013, Draghi was criticised in the context of the scandals rising around the bank Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena,[65] which according to at least one German publication was making very risky deals.

"[67] In 2015, in an appearance before the European Parliament, Draghi said that the future of the eurozone was at risk unless member countries gave up some independence and created more Pan-European government institutions.

Failure of eurozone countries to harmonise their economies and create stronger institutions would, he said, "put at risk the long-term success of the monetary union when faced with an important shock.

[69] On 31 October 2019, his mandate as ECB President expired and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde was appointed as his successor.

[73] On 2 February 2021, following failed consultations between parties to nominate a replacement, President Mattarella announced he would summon Draghi to the Quirinal Palace, with the intention of giving him the task of forming a technocratic government.

[92] Addressing the nation shortly after becoming prime minister, Draghi stated that it would be his government's priority to plan a route out of the COVID-19 pandemic, and pledged to reorganise the country's pandemic response units; on 27 February, Draghi replaced the Head of the Civil Protection, Angelo Borrelli, with Fabrizio Curcio, and on 1 March, he replaced the Extraordinary Commissioner for the COVID-19 Emergency, Domenico Arcuri, with the Army General Francesco Paolo Figliuolo, who received the additional mandate of reorganising and implementing the vaccination campaign.

[106][107][108] To contain the spread of new variants, in August of the same year, Italian government extended the requirement of the EU Digital COVID Certificate, also known as "Green Pass", to the participation in sports events and music festivals, but also to the access to indoor places like bars, restaurants, and gyms, as well as to long-distance public transportation.

[109] On 15 October of the same year, Italy became the first country in the world to established both mandatory COVID-19 vaccination certificate and/or negative test, for the entire work force, public, and private.

[112][113] In July and August, Draghi led the process to overhaul Italy's criminal and civil justice system, with an aim of reducing the time taken to resolve cases.

[118] On 30 December 2021, Draghi oversaw passage of an additional budget proposal, including an overhaul of the Italian taxation system, the introduction of a new series of tax credits and wide-ranging company tax cuts, subsidies for firms that hire young people and new mothers, subsidised mortgages for people buying their first property, and a fund set aside in order to mitigate rising energy prices.

[121] Since the beginning of his premiership, Draghi implemented an active foreign policy focused on the Mediterranean Sea, North Africa and the Middle East in order to increase Italy's influence over the area.

[122][123] On 6 April 2021, Draghi visited Libya, in his first international trip, during which he met Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, saying he wanted to strengthen ties with the African country, a former colony of Italy.

Draghi and the other leaders mainly discussed climate change, COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic global recovery in health, economic and political terms.

[143] He added that it was "impossible to have meaningful dialogue with Moscow", demanding Russia to unconditionally pull its forces back to the internationally established borders.

[144] Despite initial reluctance, on 26 February, during a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Draghi agreed to support the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT network, the international financial transactions system.

[146] Draghi was also among the main proponents of the freezing of a large part of Russian Central Bank's 643 billion dollars of foreign currency reserves.

[155] After a few hours, following a meeting with president Mattarella, Draghi officially announced his resignation as prime minister,[156] stating that "the pact of trust and confidence underlying the government action had failed.

In 1973, Mario Draghi married Maria Serenella Cappello, of noble origins and descendant of Bianca Cappello, and an expert in English literature,[165][166] with whom he has two children: Federica, who worked as investment director of Genextra Spa and board member of Italian Angels for Biotechis, and Giacomo, a finance analyst, who worked as an interest-rate derivative trader at investment bank Morgan Stanley until 2017, and is now at the LMR Partners hedge fund.