Far-right leader Giorgia Melloni has become Italy’s first female prime minister.
Meloni’s right-wing alliance – which also includes Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and former PM Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia – will take control of both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, with around 44% of the vote.
Italy is a founding father of the European Union and a member of Nato, and Meloni’s rhetoric on the EU places her close to Hungary’s nationalist leader Viktor Orbân, who has congratulated her. Italy is the EU’s third-biggest economy, but also the second most indebted country in the eurozone.
Meloni intends to revisit Italian reforms agreed with the EU in return for almost €200bn (£178bn) in post-Covid recovery grants and loans, arguing that the energy crisis has changed the situation (for which she will be responsible for negotiating price caps). She will first finalize Italy’s contentious budget for 2023.
Giorgia Meloni is from Garbatella in southern Rome, a working class but now gentrified area. This district traditionally leans left.
Meloni has pledged that her coalition will be ardently pro-Nato and supportive of the EU’s sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. This may prove difficult given the previously pro-Russian sentiment of Italy’s far right.
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