Giorgia Meloni (Italy)

What it is

Giorgia Meloni, born in Rome on 15 January 1977, has served as Italy's President of the Council of Ministers since 22 October 2022, the first woman to hold the role. She leads the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d'Italia), co-founded on 21 December 2012, a nationalist, social-conservative party with roots in the post-war Italian Social Movement. She also serves as president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, which groups more than 40 parties.

Her government is a centre-right coalition of Fratelli d'Italia, Forza Italia (Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani), and the League (Lega, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini). In the September 2022 general election, Fratelli d'Italia captured 26% of the vote, securing a comfortable majority in both chambers.

History

Meloni entered politics at 15 in Alleanza Nazionale's youth wing. At 21 she was elected councillor of the Province of Rome; at 27, she led its youth movement. She was first elected to parliament at 29. In 2008, at 31, she became Minister for Youth, the youngest minister in Italian Republic history. She founded Fratelli d'Italia after Alleanza Nazionale dissolved into the Berlusconi-era People of Freedom, positioning it to the right of that mainstream.

In March 2026, her government suffered its first significant domestic defeat. A constitutional referendum on judicial reform, which would have separated the careers of judges and prosecutors and split the Supreme Council of the Magistracy into two bodies, was rejected 55% to 45% on 58% turnout. Meloni conceded, called it "a lost opportunity", and subsequently pressured Tourism Minister Daniela Santanche to resign over unrelated fraud and false accounting proceedings.

Current state

As of July 2026, Meloni governs with a parliamentary majority but faces headwinds on several fronts. Italy's public-finance document (DFP 2026) cut Italy's growth forecast and projected a deficit near 3% of GDP, keeping Italy inside the EU's excessive-deficit procedure and constraining her fiscal room. On NATO, Meloni has committed Italy to defence spending of roughly 2.8% of GDP in 2026, up about 0.71 percentage points year-on-year, but Italy has refused to join the NATO PURL scheme to fund US weapons deliveries to Ukraine and, as of early July 2026, blocked summit draft language pledging to sustain Ukraine aid at 2026 levels into 2027. The move reflects both Salvini's openly pro-Russian wing of the coalition and Meloni's reluctance to commit future budgets to open-ended military spending.

Her relationship with US President Donald Trump, once seen as her closest transatlantic bond, ruptured publicly in June 2026 after Italy refused to grant US bombers access to a Sicily base during operations against Iran. Trump publicly claimed Meloni "begged" him for a photo op; she called the account fabricated and Tajani cancelled a planned Washington visit.

Relationships

The Trump rupture pushed Meloni toward France's Emmanuel Macron. The two met in Antibes on 25 June 2026 and signed a bilateral defence roadmap centred on the Franco-Italian SAMP/T air-defence system supplied to Ukraine, a nuclear energy deal, and a joint European satellite venture. At the same summit, France and Italy jointly proposed a European-led force to replace UNIFIL when its UN mandate expires on 31 December 2026. Meloni's government is also navigating the Almasri case, in which a Libyan court convicted Osama Almasri, a warlord Italy arrested and then released in January 2025, for torture; the case revived criminal referrals against three of her ministers.

What to watch

Bloomberg reported in June 2026 that Meloni is considering calling a snap election as early as April 2027, before the legislature's natural end in October 2027, fearing that rating erosion and the rise of the far-right MEP Roberto Vannacci (who is eclipsing Salvini inside Lega) will leave a new government too little time to pass its first budget. A snap election would put her in the position of seeking a renewed mandate before Italy's deficit challenge is resolved. The NATO Ankara summit in July 2026 and the state of the Ukraine peace process will test whether she can hold her coalition together while maintaining Italy's place in the European mainstream.