Prime Minister of Italy

Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy

Giorgia Meloni has served as the 59th Prime Minister of Italy since 22 October 2022, and is the first woman to hold the office. At three and a half years, her government is already the fourth-longest continuous Italian cabinet of the post-war era. Meloni leads a centre-right coalition formed by her Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, FdI), Matteo Salvini’s Lega, and the late Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (now led by Antonio Tajani). The coalition won the 25 September 2022 general election with 43.8% of the vote, translating into stable majorities in both chambers of parliament.

Meloni was born on 15 January 1977 in Rome and raised in the working-class Garbatella district by her mother Anna Paratore. She joined the youth wing of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) at age 15 in 1992, and rose through its successor parties (Alleanza Nazionale, then Popolo della Libertà) to serve as Minister of Youth in Silvio Berlusconi’s fourth cabinet (2008–2011) at age 31 — the youngest minister in Italian republican history. She co-founded Fratelli d’Italia in 2012 and became its president in 2014, building it from a 2% fringe party into Italy’s largest in under a decade.

Economic and EU Performance

Italy’s economy has grown modestly but stably under Meloni — 0.8% in 2023, 0.7% in 2024, and 0.9% in 2025 — better than Germany or France but below the EU average. The Meloni government has successfully negotiated disbursement of more than €160 billion of the country’s €191.5 billion Next Generation EU allocation, reformed the tax code with a flat-tax expansion for self-employed workers, and delivered four consecutive budget deficits below 3% of GDP, lifting Italy out of the EU’s excessive deficit procedure in 2024. Public debt remains stubbornly high at around 136% of GDP. Unemployment has fallen to 5.8%, the lowest since 2007.

Migration and Albania Deal

Meloni’s Mattei Plan for Africa (signed January 2024) channels Italian development assistance into North African countries in exchange for migration cooperation. The November 2023 Italy-Albania protocol — envisioning two Italian-run migrant processing centres in northern Albania — began operations in October 2024, but Italian courts and the European Court of Justice repeatedly stopped transfers. Sea arrivals have fallen from 157,600 in 2023 to roughly 66,300 in 2024 and 74,200 in 2025.

Foreign Policy

Meloni has been a consistent and vocal backer of Ukraine, co-hosting a major G7 reconstruction summit in Rome in July 2025. Relations with Donald Trump have been notably better than those of most European leaders: she visited Mar-a-Lago in January 2025 and hosted him on state visit to Rome in November 2025. Italy commits 2.0% of GDP to defence from 2025 under NATO targets. On Gaza, Meloni’s government has remained notably closer to Israel than most EU peers.

Presidential Reform Referendum

The coalition’s flagship constitutional reform — to introduce direct election of the prime minister (“premierato”) — passed both chambers but without a two-thirds majority, so requires a confirmatory referendum now scheduled for spring 2026; polls as of early 2026 show it narrowly behind.