
Giorgia Meloni
Education
- Graduated - Rome's Amerigo Vespucci Institute
- - Italian Parliament
- - High school
- Diploma -
Overview
Giorgia Meloni is an Italian politician who has been serving as the prime minister of Italy since 22 October 2022, the first woman to hold this position. A member of the Chamber of Deputies since 2006, she has led the Brothers of Italy (FdI) political party since 2014, and she has been the president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party since 2020.
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 former followers of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. 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 Italian Minister of Youth in the Berlusconi IV Cabinet, 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 Italian general election, she led FdI in opposition during the entire 18th Italian legislature. FdI grew its popularity in opinion polls, particularly during the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy 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 Italian general election.
A right-wing populist and nationalist, her political positions have been described as far right, which she rejects. She describes herself as a Christian and a conservative, and she claims to defend "God, fatherland, and family". She is opposed to abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and LGBT parenting, saying that nuclear families are exclusively headed by male–female pairs. Her discourse includes femonationalist rhetoric and criticism of globalism. Meloni supports a naval blockade to halt immigration, and she has been accused of xenophobia and Islamophobia; she has blamed neo-colonialism as a cause behind the European migrant crisis. A supporter of NATO, she maintains Eurosceptic views regarding the European Union, which she describes as Eurorealist, and was in favour of better relations with Russia before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, after which she pledged to keep sending arms to Ukraine. However, Meloni has expressed controversial views, such as praising Mussolini when she was 19. In 2020, she praised Giorgio Almirante, a civil minister in Mussolini's Italian Social Republic who produced racist propaganda and co-founded the MSI. Nevertheless, Meloni has said that she and her party condemn both the suppression of democracy and the introduction of the Italian racial laws by the fascist regime. In 2022, according to Forbes, Meloni was the seventh most powerful woman in the world.
Early Life
Giorgia Meloni was born in Rome on 15 January 1977. Her father was from Sardinia and her mother is from Sicily. Her father, a tax advisor, left the family when she was one year old in 1978, by moving to the Canary Islands; 17 years later, he was convicted for drug trafficking and sentenced to 9 years in a Spanish prison in 1995. He last contacted Meloni in 2006, when she became the Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies. She grew up in the working-class district of Garbatella. She has a sister, Arianna, who was born in 1975 and is married to Francesco Lollobrigida, the Italian Minister of Agriculture since 22 October 2022.
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 Piper Club , one of the most famous night clubs in Rome.
Meloni graduated from Rome's Amerigo Vespucci Institute (AVI) 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. This created some controversy, as the AVI was not a foreign language high school and was not qualified to issue a diploma in languages; instead, it was a technical high school specialised in the tourist industry,to which she later clarified
Meloni has a daughter, Ginevra, with her partner Andrea Giambruno, a journalist who works for Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset TV channel. She is a Roman Catholic and has used her religious identity in part to help build her national brand. In a 2019 speech to a rally in Rome, she said: "I am Giorgia. I'm a woman, I'm a mother, I'm Italian, I'm Christian." Despite her Christian beliefs and championing traditional family values, Meloni defended herself not being married to her child's father. In September 2022, she reportedly continued to embrace the old Italian fascist slogan "God, fatherland and family". She has said she resents being linked to Italy's fascist past.
Meloni is an avid fan of fantasy, particularly J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. As a youth activist with the Italian Social Movement (MSI), she attended the Camp Hobbit festival and sang along with the far-right folk band Compagnia dell'Anello [it], named after The Fellowship of the Ring. Later, she named her political conference Atreju, after the hero of the novel The Neverending Story. Meloni told The New York Times: "I think that Tolkien could say better than we can what conservatives believe in." Apart from Tolkien, she is fond of British conservative philosopher Roger Scruton and has said: "If I were British I would be a Tory." In addition to her native Italian, she speaks English, French and Spanish.
Career
- Prime Minister of Italy - Italian politician