Giorgia Meloni

Giorgia Meloni (; born 15 January 1977) is an Italian politician who has been serving as the prime minister of Italy since October 2022, the first woman to hold this position. A member of the Chamber of Deputies since 2006, she has led the right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) political party since 2014 and has been the president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party since 2020. ''Forbes'' ranked Meloni as the fourth most powerful woman in the world in 2023. In 2024 she was listed among the most influential people in the world by ''Time'' magazine.

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 Italian Minister of Youth 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 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 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.

Meloni is a Catholic and a conservative, and she believes in defending "God, fatherland, and family". She is opposed to euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and same-sex 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 illegal immigration, and she has been accused of xenophobia and Islamophobia. A supporter of NATO, she maintains Eurosceptic views regarding the European Union which she describes as "Eurorealist". She was in favour of improved relations with Russia before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, which she condemned, pledging to keep sending arms to Ukraine. Provided by Wikipedia