Giorgia Meloni
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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 far-right Brothers of Italy party (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.