Arel – Agenzia di Ricerca e Legislazione – was founded in 1976 on an idea by Nino Andreatta who, together with a group of leading figures from politics, academia, industry and the professions (among them Umberto Agnelli, Urbano Aletti, Adriano Bompiani, Franco A. Grassini, Ferrante Pierantoni), felt the need for a place to dig deeper into the most pressing economic, administrative and institutional issues, both Italian and international.
The goal was clear: to analyse complexity with the most modern and rigorous tools of inquiry, while promoting a spirit of cultural innovation and open dialogue across perspectives and professions.
Since 2025, Arel has been chaired by Enrico Letta, who had already long served as Secretary General (1993 – 2013 and 2014 – 2023). His presidency represents a natural continuation of a path that closely links his own personal story to that of the Association.
Over the past five decades, Arel’s meetings, conferences, seminars and observatories, together with its research, have tackled an exceptionally broad range of questions. This is clear from the variety of subjects covered in its editorial series published with Il Mulino, its Monographs and its own journal.
Starting from core economic themes – such as the relationship between state and industry across European countries – Arel’s scope has gradually expanded to studies and initiatives in the fields of justice, reform of central and local public administration, financial and market transparency, healthcare, institutional reform, European affairs and the environment.
All these activities have consistently followed the same method: open, wide-ranging debate, based on rigorous analysis and the meeting of expertise across academia, business and politics. Work at Arel is never an end in itself, discussion and analysis are systematically aimed at producing operational or legislative proposals, at both national and European level.
Over the years, various projects and initiatives have grown out of Arel. In 2015 it launched two important ventures, both of which later developed independently: on one side, the Scuola di Politiche (School of Policies), aimed at training talented young people aged 18 to 26, strengthening their skills and awareness to make them agents of innovation in professional, civic and political life; on the other, the Italy-ASEAN Association, created to deepen dialogue, knowledge and exchange between Italy and the ASEAN countries, fostering ever closer and more fruitful collaboration between our country and Southeast Asia.
In 2025 AREL also launched the Single Market Lab, a project designed to develop innovative proposals for strengthening Europe’s economy and integration, building on the consolidated method used in drafting the Letta Report “Much More Than a Market”.
It was August 1976. On 20-21 June, Italy had held general elections with turnout of over 93% – including 18-year-olds voting for the first time. At the head of the country’s largest party, the Christian Democrats, was Benigno Zaccagnini, intent on renewing the party and opening it up to academics and professionals. And so, in the Senate of the Seventh Legislature, a group of professors, executives and managers entered Parliament. Among them was Nino Andreatta. Their aim was to embody a new way of doing politics: the idea that competence matters more than affiliation, that technical expertise is essential to make legislation efficient and useful for the country.
It was on this conviction that Arel was born. Its president was Andreatta, already a charismatic figure, well known in the press and for years an adviser to Aldo Moro. Alongside him was nuclear engineer Ferrante Pierantoni, who would become the Association’s long-standing Secretary General. Close to Arel from the beginning was also Francesco Merloni, who in 2007 would take over from Andreatta as president.
Arel lived through and accompanied the historic changes of these decades, paying too a tragic price during the dark years of terrorism: Roberto Ruffilli was assassinated by the Red Brigades on 16 April 1988, three days after approving the final print of “Il cittadino come arbitro” (The Citizen as Umpire), his most famous work, published in the Arel – Il Mulino series; Marco Biagi, killed on 19 March 2002, had taken part in Arel seminars presenting his labour market reform proposals.
The subjects and debates touched on all the major European and global events: from the Southern enlargement of the European Community in the 1980s (Greece, Spain, Portugal), to the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Maastricht Treaty, the successive enlargements of the EU, European defence, and technological innovation. Closed-door meetings, public conferences and published volumes all testify to this story.
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