GJIA: Where does Giorgia Meloni stand in Italian politics? What aided her meteoric rise from the leader of a marginalized party to the head of the Italian government?
Teresa Coratella: Giorgia Meloni is one of the few people in Italian politics who has devoted her entire professional life—and sometimes her private life—to politics. Even with her early stint as a journalist, politics has been the focus of her career. It is her life. At the age of thirty-one, she was the youngest minister in the Italian government under Silvio Berlusconi. She was also among the very few women in a male-dominated environment, especially in the rightist context. The political situation today is very different from when Meloni first came onto the scene.
In retrospect, she succeeded despite her unconventional background, becoming the first female prime minister of Italy. She took public support for her Brothers of Italy party from zero to thirty percent after two and a half years in government. In politics, it is natural that the leading party would start losing consensus after a year or more. Meloni, on the contrary, has managed to increase public support. Her difficult family background has helped her portray herself as a commoner who can relate to and speak for the people. Raised by her mother in a working-class area of Garbatella. Meloni got her schooling in youth right-wing political activism and joined the Youth Front, the youth branch of Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), at just fifteen years old. The youth culture in Italy then was dominated by the far left. The MSI, formed by former fascists after the Second World War, cast itself as an embattled minority fighting against an increasingly intolerant and often violent leftwing youth movement. This sense of counterculture and defiance left a mark on Meloni. Throughout her career, she has worked hard to achieve the legitimacy that has eluded other European right-wing politicians. Those early political standoffs and her delicate move toward a non-fascist identity defined Meloni’s deft ideological triangulating now.
GJIA: Meloni was the only European leader invited to Donald Trump’s second inauguration, after their meeting at Mar-a-Lago in early January. Why did Trump take a liking to Meloni? Is it the ideological closeness in views on liberalism, migration, and cultural values? Do they share an admiration for authoritarian strongmen?
TC: President Trump likes Meloni because of her pragmatism. For example, to solve the European migration crisis, Meloni had dialogues with Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, despite being on the other end of the political spectrum. Meloni looked beyond political divisions and tried to build relationships for Italian interests. That is the same pragmatism that Trump plays by. Even during the Biden presidency, Meloni maintained relations with the Republican Party and Trump.
There is also an ideological similarity, especially on civil rights issues and their shared view of the traditional family ideal. They are both very conservative and on this topic, Meloni aligns more closely with Trump than other European leaders. That closeness opens the door for other constructive dialogues. Another example of ideological convergence is the centrality of religion in their conservative rhetorics. Meloni frames her politics within a Christian nationalist context, urging that Italy’s cultural roots must be defended against secular and progressive influences. Trump, too, aligns himself with evangelical Christians in his opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion rights. On the foreign relations front, the pair share a skepticism toward multilateralism. Trump withdrew the United States from international agreements such as the Paris Climate Accord and aired his distrust of global cooperation on many occasions. Even though Meloni has not taken as radical a stance, she has called for reforms that undermine EU centralization. Her emphasis on national economic protectionism is certainly in line with Trump’s blitz of tariffs.
GJIA: What are the benefits of Meloni being in Trump’s good books? What are the dangers of aligning herself too closely with Trump 2.0?
TC: The biggest danger to her is political isolation. If we look at her position in Europe, Meloni decided to vote against the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen for a second term as President of the Commission. If she decides to be Trump’s champion in Europe, she will drift even farther away from other European leaders. Meloni should not forget that Italy is not the United States of America but a part of the European Union, which is not just a political ideal or an à la cartemembership. The European Union has a number of laws and rules that each member state needs to abide by. Meloni is not realistically considering the consequences of showcasing her special relationship with Trump or Musk. European leaders are still shocked by Trump’s re-election and his policies toward Europe. What Meloni should do is to be very careful, instead of cheerleading excessively for President Trump.
GJIA: What does the Meloni administration’s potential five-year contract with Starlink tell us about her privileges in Washington and its political priorities?
TC: Like President Trump, Musk is a very transactional person. He will do whatever he can to expand his business empire in Europe. Knowing that Europe is very united, Musk seeks to split EU member states to further his agenda. In Italy, we first read about the use of Starlink when an Italian journalist was kidnapped and detained in Iran. The Italian Embassy in Iran was using Starlink to circumvent Iranian control. With her relationship to Musk, Meloni wants to prove that she’s a special case within Europe. However, as we see today, Musk is already engaging with other EU member states. In Germany, Musk showed his support for the far-right Alternative fuer Deutschland party ahead of the 2025 federal elections. The relationship is, at its core, transactional. Meloni got a lot of visibility, Musk got a lot of business, and both are happy about it. In two months, we will see Musk having a new best friend in Europe.
GJIA: With ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, fraught policies towards Africa and migration, and multilateral cooperation on AI, what are Meloni’s foreign policy priorities?
TC: Meloni has three foreign policy priorities for her government. The first is to keep transatlantic relations strong. Every Italian government since the end of the Second World War—from rightist to leftist, from populist to pro-Europeanist—has always had transatlantic relations as the main pillar of its foreign policy. It is a rare common ground for all Italians, and Meloni is aware of that. This is why she plays her Trump card very independently—she knows that she would not be challenged by her allies in the administration.
Her second priority is the Middle East and North Africa region, with a special focus on Libya for two reasons. The first is our energy dependence on Libyan oil, and the second is the migration crisis, which is directly linked to Libya. Italy’s energy sector has signed many agreements with Libyan counterparts as Meloni seeks to secure new natural gas supplies to replace Russian energy. Secondly, Libya and Tunisia have been among the main countries of departure for illegal migrants in recent years. For the Italian government, the stability of Libya, and more generally of the North Africa region, is vital.
Her third priority is Ukraine. Meloni supports Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty with little political aims or calculations. Sovereignty has been Meloni’s political mantra: the sovereignty of the Italian people, Italian territories, Italian goods, and Italian markets. She felt that the Russian invasion was a true violation of Ukrainian citizens’ rights and sovereignty. Russia has never been a foreign policy priority for Meloni’s party. She did not have the same attachment to Russia as other Italian leaders in the past, like Silvio Berlusconi for twenty years or even Mateo Salvini from the League party, the junior partner of the current government (rightist coalition).
GJIA: In your article “A United Front,” you cited a potential US disengagement from EU regional and global affairs. Does it still hold true?
TC: President Trump is not interested in European regional and multilateral priorities. He does, of course, want to end the war between Israel and Hamas. However, that urgency does not come from his eagerness to give a political solution to the crisis but rather from the idea of not having to deal with it. That is his very basic pragmatism: he does not care about how the war ends. His mandate is to solely preserve US interests and to guarantee US growth, especially in ramping up domestic production and reducing trade deficits with China. For Trump, Europe—and all its problems—is not on his agenda. The declaration on withdrawing from the World Health Organization sends a clear message that he wants to focus only on US priorities, which do not always align with European ones. We are in a new era of foreign relations between Washington DC and Brussels. In my opinion, this is a wake-up call for European policymakers. If they expect any kind of US support in European crises and problems, they will soon be very disappointed.
GJIA: You wrote about Meloni’s “chameleonic behavior” last year when she voted against Ursula von der Leyen’s re-election in 2024, which showcased her willingness to renege on previous political alliances. What would be her playbook going forward in promoting Italian interests against the backdrop of the European Union and NATO?
TC: Meloni’s main priority this year will remain migration. It is an existential question that will always affect Italy. Concerning NATO, I do not think she will meet President Trump’s request to contribute two percent of Italian GDP to defense spending for two reasons. One is that Italy has serious budgetary issues. We do not even have a budget for social reforms. The second reason is that Italian society is not very open to public discourse about defense and security. Italy has not been at war since the Second World War and experienced the former Yugoslavia war from afar, though with emotional involvement. Culturally, Italians do not like to emphasize defense, which is strongly associated with anti-US sentiment. Instead, economic stability is the main priority of Italian citizens. No politician, Meloni included, will put much effort into increasing defense spending. The country is simply not ready for this kind of debate.
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Teresa Coratella is a Policy fellow and the deputy head of the Rome office at the ECFR Rome office, where she focuses on Italian foreign policy, disinformation, and the role of Poland in Europe. Before joining the ECFR in 2011, Coratella worked at the Warsaw-based Institute for Eastern Studies as a program assistant, organizing high-level international conferences on foreign policy across Europe. Native Italian and Polish, she holds an MA in European Interdisciplinary Studies from the College of Europe with a focus on the European Union as a regional actor.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Interview conducted by Sharon Xie.
Image Credit: European Union, via Wikimedia Commons.
