Giorgia Meloni
Giorgia Meloni was appointed President of the Council of Ministers on 22 October 2022. The President of the Council of Ministers [ie, Prime Minister] guides and is ultimately responsible for general Government policy; ensures consistency of political and administrative action; drives and coordinates the work of Government ministers; performs all the other duties conferred upon her by the law.
Giorgia Meloni became the first female prime minister of Italy. Meloni, the leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, formed the country's most right-wing government since Benito Mussolini. and the head of the country's most right-wing government. Women seemed to be doing particularly well at the helm of Europe's far-right parties. Giorgia Meloni was born in Rome on 15 January 1977 and is a professional journalist. She became involved in politics at the age of 15, as a student and youth movement member. In her teenage years, Meloni was a far-right activist who praised fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. She says she has changed. “When the election campaign opens, the fascist alarm goes off. As you can understand, it's quite ridiculous to retrieve videos of what I thought when I was 15, 16 or 17,” Meloni said. In 2006, as an MP for the National Alliance, she told a reporter in an interview for Corriere Magazine that she had a "serene relationship with fascism" as a chapter in Italy's history, adding, "Mussolini made several mistakes... Historically he has also produced a lot, but this does not save him."
At 21, she was elected councillor of the Province of Rome and, at 27, she was elected leader of Azione Giovani, the youth movement of the Alleanza Nazionale party. When she was 29, she was elected as a member of parliament for the first time and, during the XV Legislature, she held the role of vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies. She holds the record for being the Italian Republic’s youngest ever minister: in fact, in 2008, she became Minister for Youth at the age of 31.
On 21 December 2012, she founded Fratelli d’Italia, and is the party’s national president. Neofascist parties had been based at Via Della Scrofa 39 since 1946— the Italian Social Movement, the National Alliance and now the Brothers of Italy, named after the first verse of the Italian national anthem. Party leader Giorgia Meloni has made a point of keeping the office in the historic building, which was once frequented by followers of former fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Meloni said she has an unbroken relationship with history. Dictator Mussolini was "a complex personality," she has said in interviews. Even today, many Italians don't think everything was bad under Mussolini.
Meloni has not clearly distanced herself from fascism; in her 2021 autobiography, she wrote that she is aware she is navigating a political minefield. "We are children of our history. Of our whole history. As is the case with all other nations, the path we have traveled is complex, much more complicated than many want to make known," she wrote. When Meloni holds press conferences at the party headquarters, a fascist symbol is always in plain view — the logo of the Brothers of Italy.
During the XVII Legislature, she was parliamentary group chair at the Chamber of Deputies. In 2020, she was elected president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, a political family that brings together more than 40 EU and non-EU parties. With the populist slogan "Italy and Italians first!" Meloni called for low taxes and a halt to immigration.
Railing against the European Union, immigration and "LGBT lobbies", Meloni presents herself as a defender of traditional Catholic values. "I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian," she declared at a 2019 rally in Rome. Meloni built an image as a steady, straight-talking politician Italians could trust, despite her party's neo-fascist roots, which she has claimed are "history" without entirely renouncing.
The politician wanted to move the party from the political fringes, from the extreme right to center right. Meloni sought to remold the party and pitch it as a conservative champion of patriotism that appeals to the middle class to form a coalition with other right-wing parties — Matteo Salvini's League and Forza Italia, led by former premier Silvio Berlusconi. Still, concern had grown in Italy and among its neighbors over civil rights, as well as Rome's involvement in alliances like NATO.
Neofascist parties had been based at Via Della Scrofa 39 since 1946 - the Italian Social Movement, the National Alliance and now the Brothers of Italy, named after the first verse of the Italian national anthem. Party leader Giorgia Meloni has made a point of keeping the office in the historic building, which was once frequented by followers of former fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Meloni said she has an unbroken relationship with history. Dictator Mussolini was "a complex personality," she has said in interviews. Even today, many Italians don't think everything was bad under Mussolini.
Meloni had not clearly distanced herself from fascism; in her 2021 autobiography, she wrote that she is aware she is navigating a political minefield. "We are children of our history. Of our whole history. As is the case with all other nations, the path we have traveled is complex, much more complicated than many want to make known," she wrote.
She does, however, reject the cult of the leader common to fascism, she added. But when Meloni holds press conferences at the party headquarters, a fascist symbol is always in plain view - the logo of the Brothers of Italy. It's a stylized flame in the Italian national colors - green, white and red - an eternal flame that burns figuratively at Mussolini's grave. "I have nothing to apologize for in my life. But in two out of three television discussions, I'm supposed to talk about history and not about current politics. I don't think that's right."
The September 2022 election came about in the wake of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi's fragile coalition collapsing, as part of a process that began when the 5 Star Movement withdrew its support from the government. Draghi resigned in July, unable to push through an aid package designed to counter inflation.
Meloni brought her post-fascist Brothers of Italy party from the political fringes to become a national force leading the government. In preparation for the election campaign leading up to the vote on 25 September 2022, Meloni sent out internal memos to party groups instructing them to stop making extreme statements, to refrain from making references to fascism and, above all, to refrain from the so-called Roman salute, a gesture with an outstretched right arm which resembles the Hitler or Nazi salute.
Meloni headed into the election campaign with the populist slogan "Italy and Italian people first!" She has called for more family-friendly benefits, less European bureaucracy, low taxes and a halt to immigration. She wants to renegotiate EU treaties, and her party rejects abortions and same-sex marriage. In terms of economic and foreign policy, the trained foreign language secretary is relatively inexperienced. She has spent most of her political career as a member of parliament and a party official.
Exit polls had shown the alliance, led by Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, securing around 45% of the vote. Meloni's own party had 26% of that by itself, as the strongest single group in the polls. The center-left alliance, led by the Democratic Party, was the second-strongest bloc, with 29%. The populist 5 Star Movement grabbed 16.5%, following reports of a last-minute surge in support after a polling moratorium had been imposed. The projections indicated that the center-right alliance was winning between 227 and 257 of the 400 seats in the lower house of parliament and 111-131 of the 200 Senate seats. The center-left alliance, led by the Democratic Party, was projected to have secured 88 seats in the lower house and 42 seats in the Senate.
The pre-election polls were right for once. A right-wing coalition was widely predicted to win Italy’s elections. And it did, with Giorgia Meloni’s party, the Brothers of Italy, polling 26% of the vote, with the other conservative parties bringing the total up to 44%, making her the undisputed leader of the conservative coalition that had a majority in Italy’s new Parliament.
The victory made Meloni, 45, the object of widespread international perplexity and even abuse. She had been portrayed as the heir of Benito Mussolini and the harbinger of a new fascism. Yet whatever Italian democracy’s many faults, it isn’t toppling, and there is no risk of authoritarianism. Ms. Meloni, a career politician, has been vocal in defending Parliament’s prerogatives against encroachments by the executive branch. She owes her victory at least in part to opposing the government’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic, which included draconian lockdowns—the most authoritarian policy Italians experienced in generations since World War II.
On 22 October 2022, she was sworn in as President of the Council of Ministers by President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinale Palace. She is the first woman in Italy’s history to hold this position.
"If she has made it this far in Italy, it's thanks to all those who have whitewashed her — from the media who insist on calling Salvini and Meloni center right to Berlusconi and the Grillini [followers of the left-leaning 5-Star Movement — Editor's note], who brought her to power, and a disoriented center left that underestimated and legitimized her," said Alba Sidera, a Spanish journalist who has for years researched the Italian far right. "Meloni did not suddenly appear out of nowhere. She has been preparing to become prime minister for years."
Meloni addressed parliament on 25 October 2022 for the first time since she got the job. In an apparent bid to reassure Western allies, Meloni sought to distance herself from fascism. "I have never felt any sympathy or closeness to anti-democratic regimes... fascism included," Meloni told lawmakers. She vowed to fight "any form of racism, antisemitism, political violence [and] discrimination."
"A center-right government will never curtail the existing liberties of citizens and firms," Meloni said in parliament. "The proof of facts will show, even on civil rights and abortion, who was lying and who was saying the truth during the election campaign concerning our true intentions," she added. Meloni has appointed an ultra-conservative Catholic, Maria Roccella, as Italy's minister for family, birthrates and equal opportunities. Roccella had pledged in 2018 to work against legalizing same-sex civil unions.
Meloni, who has long called for restricting migration, also said that the government wants to stop illegal immigration and human trafficking. "We do not intend in any way to question the right of asylum for those fleeing war and persecution," she said. Meloni had been known to be a euroskeptic politican. But she told lawmakers that the new government is committed to the EU and NATO. "This government will respect the [EU] rules currently in force and at the same time offer its contribution to change those that have not worked," she said.
Her predecessor, Mario Draghi, was one of the strongest supporters of EU sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Meloni said the Italian government would "continue to be a reliable partner of NATO in supporting Ukraine." Though Meloni has expressed her solidarity with Ukraine and said she supported the sanctions, her future coalition allies are less reliable. Berlusconi, a friend of Vladimir Putin's, recently claimed on Italian TV that Russia's president had been pushed into invading. Lega leader Salvini said the European Union's sanctions on Russia had brought Italy "to its knees."
Andrea Giambruno and Giorgia Meloni may not have been husband and wife, but their lives and careers were nevertheless intertwined. Giambruno, 41, is a TV journalist working for ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's TV channel, Mediaset. The couple started dating after meeting through work eight years ago and had a six-year-old daughter.
Meloni revealed that she separated from her longtime partner, the television personality Andrea Giambruno, after footage emerged of him appearing to proposition a female co-host to a “threesome or foursome.” “My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted almost ten years, ends here,” Meloni, 46, wrote in a social media post on 20 October 2023, just days after footage of Giambruno’s actions on the set of well-known show ‘Striscia la Notizia’ went viral.
Meloni added in her social media post that her and Giambruno’s “paths have diverged for some time” ahead of their breakup. “I will defend what we were, I will defend our friendship, and I will defend, at all costs, a seven-year-old girl who loves her mother and loves her father, as I was unable to love mine.”
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