Rolling her eyes at Emmanuel Macron, being received on her knees by the Prime Minister of Albania or whispering her strategy to the media in the ear of Donald Trump, Giorgia Meloni has been the center of attention in almost all of her trips abroad. In Sharm el-Sheikh, a few days ago, at the Peace Summit in Gaza, the American president may have caused some discomfort by emphasizing her beauty, but he did not fail to highlight how the Italian prime minister is also “very successful”.
Now that three years have passed since he came to power – making his the third longest-lasting government in Italy (1098 days) after two of his former ally Silvio Berlusconi – Meloni has become the face of political stability in a country where it has been scarce. And in a 68-page document, its executive, which brings together its Brothers of Italy, Salvini’s League, and the late Berlusconi’s Força Itália, highlighted its greatest successes. Starting with the drop in unemployment (currently at 6%, the increase in public investment (61% more compared to 2022) or the control of the deficit, which should remain at the 3% foreseen in the EU Stability and Growth Pact. In 2021 it was above 8%. With a growth of 3.2% in GDP predicted for 2025 (according to the latest IMF figures. Portugal should remain at 1.9%), Italy will receive 194 billion from PRR – the biggest check issued by the EU. A value that has already drawn criticism from the opposition, which denounces fictitious growth, piggybacking on European funds.
It is true that not everything is rosy: the debt remains at 135% of GDP, industrial production fell and the demographic crisis, combined with growing emigration, forced the government to review immigration policies – it even had a plan to send migrants to centers in Albania, blocked by the courts – to open its doors to half a million immigrants.
At 48 years old, the daughter of a tax advisor with communist sympathies, who left the family when she was 11 years old, raised by her mother in a working-class neighborhood of Rome and who entered politics at 15, in the youth of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, has shown in these three years that after all she is not the bogeyman that Europe came to fear. Not only did the woman manage to break with the machismo installed in Italian politics, she also gained the respect of other European leaders – and beyond – by moderating some positions, proving that her figure cute doesn’t stop her from playing in the big leagues.
Of course, there is no shortage of people accusing her of not carrying out the structural reforms that Italy needs, but just look at the polls to see that Italians trust their prime minister, whose Brothers of Italy remains above 30% voting intentions, well ahead of the center-left Democratic Party. The next elections are only scheduled for 2027, but at this moment Meloni seems well placed to beat Berlusconi’s 1412 days.
Executive editor of Diário de Notícias