Giorgia Meloni

Giorgia Meloni (Italian: [ˈdʒordʒa meˈloːni]; born 15 January 1977) is an Italian politician who has served as Prime Minister of Italy since October 2022. She is the first woman to hold the office and the head of the third-longest government in the history of the Italian Republic. A member of the Chamber of Deputies since 2006, she has been president of the right-wing to far-right party Brothers of Italy (FdI) since 2014, and was president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party from 2020 to 2025.

In 1992, Meloni joined the Youth Front, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist political party founded in 1946 by followers of Italian fascism. She later became the national leader of Student Action, the student movement of the National Alliance (AN), a post-fascist party that became the MSI's legal successor in 1995 and moved towards national conservatism. She was a councillor of the province of Rome from 1998 to 2002, after which she became the president of Youth Action, the youth wing of AN. In 2008 she was appointed Minister for Youth Policies in the fourth Berlusconi government, a role which she held until 2011. In 2012, she co-founded FdI, a legal successor to AN, and became its president in 2014. She unsuccessfully ran in the 2014 European Parliament election and the 2016 Rome municipal election. After the 2018 general election, she led FdI in opposition during the entire 18th legislature. FdI grew its popularity in opinion polls, particularly during the management of the COVID-19 pandemic by the Draghi Cabinet, a national unity government to which FdI was the only opposition party. Following the fall of the Draghi government, FdI won the 2022 general election.

Meloni is a Catholic and a conservative, and believes in defending "Dio, patria, famiglia" ('God, fatherland, family'). She is opposed to euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and same-sex parenting, stating that nuclear families are exclusively headed by male–female pairs. She is also a critic of globalism. Meloni supported (but never enacted) a naval blockade to halt illegal immigration, and she has been described as xenophobic and Islamophobic by some critics. A supporter of NATO, she maintains Eurosceptic views regarding the European Union (EU), views she describes as "Eurorealist". She favoured improved relations with Russia before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, which she condemned, pledging to keep sending arms to Ukraine. In 2024, Forbes ranked Meloni as the third-most-powerful woman in the world and she was listed amongst the most influential people in the world by Time magazine, while Politico ranked her as the most powerful person in Europe in 2025.

Early life

Giorgia Meloni was born on 15 January 1977 in Rome, Italy. Her father, Francesco Meloni, was the son of Nino Meloni, a radio director from Sardinia, and the actress Zoe Incrocci from Lombardy. Meloni's mother, Anna Paratore, is from Sicily. Her father was a tax advisor and according to some political profiles had communist sympathies and voted for the Italian Communist Party, while her mother later became a novelist. Her father abandoned the family in 1978 when she was one year old, moving to the Canary Islands and remarrying. Meloni has four half-siblings from her father's second marriage. Seventeen years later, in 1995, he was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to nine years in a Spanish prison. He last contacted Meloni in 2006, when she became the vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies. Legal documents have revealed an alleged indirect economic link through a network of real estate companies in which the ex-wife Anna Paratore, mother of Giorgia Meloni, was a partner at various times.

Meloni was raised in the working-class district of Garbatella in Rome, moving there after the more affluent home she had first lived in as an infant with her parents was destroyed in a house fire a few years after her father left. Her upbringing has been described by her family as impoverished. In her autobiography, Meloni wrote that her childhood and her family's breakdown influenced her political outlook. Meloni has a sister, Arianna, who was born in 1975 and has been appointed head of the party's political secretariat in 2023. Arianna was also partnered with Francesco Lollobrigida, who has been Minister of Agriculture since 22 October 2022.

Education and early political activism

In 1992, at 15 years of age, Meloni joined the Youth Front, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist political party that dissolved in 1995. During this time, she founded the student coordination Gli Antenati ('The Ancestors'), which took part in the protest against the public education reform promoted by minister Rosa Russo Iervolino. In 1996, she became the national leader of Student Action, the student movement of the post-fascist National Alliance (AN), the national-conservative heir of the MSI, representing this movement in the Student Associations Forum established by the Italian Ministry of Education.

In 1998, after winning the primary election, Meloni was elected as a councillor of the province of Rome, holding this position until 2002. She was elected national director in 2000 and became the first woman president of Youth Action, the AN youth wing, in 2004. During these years, she worked as a nanny, waitress, and bartender at the it:Piper Club, one of the most famous nightclubs in Rome.

Meloni graduated from Istituto tecnico professionale di Stato Amerigo Vespucci in 1996. After her election to the Italian Parliament in 2006, she declared in her curriculum vitae that she obtained a high school diploma in languages with the final mark of 60/60, and "Diploma di liceo linguistico; Giornalista". This created some controversy, as Istituto tecnico professionale di Stato Amerigo Vespucci was not a foreign language high school and was not qualified to issue any diploma in languages; instead, it was a Hospitality Institute (see istituto tecnico) specialised in issuing professional diplomas for job titles such as chef, waiter, entertainer, tour guide, hostess, depending on the course of studies chosen by the student. It is unknown what course of studies Meloni selected at Istituto tecnico professionale di Stato Amerigo Vespucci. Meloni mentioned that the Hospitality Institute she attended became the Centro di Formazione Professionale Ernesto Nathan issuing diplomas in foreign languages. However, training centers are not allowed to issue diplomas. The Centro di Formazione Professionale Ernesto Nathan issues qualifications for beauticians and hairdressers.

Political career

Minister of Youth

In the 2006 Italian general election, she was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a member of the National Alliance (AN), where she became its youngest ever vice-president. In 2006, she also started to work as a journalist. In 2006, Meloni defended the laws passed by the third Berlusconi government that benefited companies of the prime minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi and also delayed ongoing trials involving him. Meloni said: "it is necessary to contextualise them. Those are laws that Silvio Berlusconi made for himself. But they are perfectly fair laws."

After the general election in April 2008, she (then 31 years old) was appointed Minister for Youth Policies in the fourth Berlusconi government, a position she held until 16 November 2011, when Berlusconi was forced to resign as the prime minister amid a financial crisis and public protests. She was the second youngest-ever minister in the history of Italy since 1861. In August 2008, she invited Italian athletes to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games in disagreement with the Chinese policy implemented towards Tibet. This statement was criticised by Berlusconi and by the foreign affairs minister Franco Frattini.

In 2009, her party merged with Forza Italia (FI) into The People of Freedom (PdL) and she took over the presidency of the united party's youth section, called Young Italy. In the same year, she voted in favour of a decree law against euthanasia.

In November 2010, on behalf of the ministry, she presented a €300 million package (equivalent to €396.77 million in 2023) called the "Right to the Future". It was aimed at investing in young people and contained five initiatives, including incentives for new entrepreneurs, bonuses in favour of temporary workers, and loans for deserving students.

In November 2012, she announced her bid to contest the PdL leadership against Angelino Alfano, in opposition to the party's support of the Monti government. After the cancellation of the primaries, she teamed up with fellow politicians Ignazio La Russa and Guido Crosetto to set out an anti-Monti policy, asking for renewal within the party and being also critical of the leadership of Berlusconi.