How to Think About Giorgia Meloni
Her outward conciliation conceals a hard Euroskeptic agenda.
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Non-Italians have been confused over what to think about Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s current prime minister. Some have sought to make her a charter member of populist-nationalist wave of Viktor Orbán and the German AfD, while others have noted her support for Ukraine and NATO. Here, Giovanna Maria Dora Dore provides context for evaluating her politics, inside and outside of Italy.
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Giorgia Meloni is Italy’s 34th prime minister since 1943. Her election victory in September 2022 was historic in many ways. She is Italy’s first female prime minister, she leads the most right-wing three-party coalition since the end of World War II, and her transition from leader of the opposition to prime minister has been remarkably smooth by Italian standards. Until the moment she became prime minister, Meloni was a relatively marginal figure in Italian politics; since then, she has been seen as pro-NATO, pro-America, unwavering in her support for President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and an Italian leader who has built an amicable relationship with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. This reassured the international markets as well as the international community which did not know what to make of her or what they expect from her.
The latter image may not last, however. Meloni has yet to convince Italians that she is a consequential leader in Europe and on the global stage. And while labelling her as Euroskeptic might be overly simplistic, Italians know how strongly she abhors the idea of the EU trampling individual states’ sovereignty, and how much she would like the EU to become less and less relevant as a supranational entity. In these beliefs, Meloni does not have the support of the Italians who remain pro-euro and pro-EU, no matter what their political views might be. Meloni is a talented politician and has become a recurrent presence on TV, radio and social media platforms. She makes chatty videos to update Italians on key political initiatives of her government, or comment on the everyday struggles of average Italians; her social media feed always includes images of her speaking to a crowd of supporters, in front of the symbol of Fratelli d’Italia or side by side with international leaders, reminiscent of Mussolini’s and Berlusconi’s communication campaigns.
Meloni’s political roots help us understand her contrasting domestic and international images. Fratelli d’Italia is the legacy of Italy’s post-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) as well as Alleanza Nazionale (AN). In line with the values of MSI and AN, Meloni is against the formalization of non-traditional families with either a single parent and/or same-sex parents, a staunch believer of the protection of Western civilization through the assertion of national identities, and conservative when it comes to immigration. She is known for seeing racial, gender, religious, or linguistic difference as threatening, and for championing a political agenda centered on exclusion, borders, and economic and cultural protectionism, regardless of how at odds these views might be with the EU stance on refugees, racial and ethnic minorities and LGBTQ people.
Meloni’s handling of domestic dissent is also raising eyebrows for how reminiscent it is to practices common during fascism. Early in the spring, the government’s reaction to domestic peaceful protests raised concerns about the use of force by the authorities, drawing a rare official comment by Italy’s president. Then, the early summer saw a series of strikes in the Italian state media (RAI) motivated by an increasing loss of journalistic independence as well as freedom of speech. RAI has always been a tool of political power, and in the past each channel was allotted to the supporters of one of the major parties or another. But since Meloni has been in office, RAI journalists, regardless of their political orientation or the channel that they work for, have been subjected to unprecedented political pressure and censorship. They have accused the prime minister of turning RAI into a megaphone for the ruling party and ensuring flattering coverage of government policies. Meloni is also using defamation lawsuits to stifle critical coverage or retaliate against journalists for asking too many or unflattering questions.
These tensions are behind the contrasting perceptions of Meloni’s premiership. Domestically, she is seen as a subtle threat to democracy, manifesting itself in the slow erosion of individual liberties in the name of Faith, Family, and Nation—values that Italy has seen lined up together only during the time Mussolini was in power and which embody the passionate face of the right. Internationally, Meloni has built an image of a pragmatic and influential leader, recently strengthened by being included in Time Magazine’s 2024 list of most influential people, and scoring the top spot of the Politico Europe Doers ranking.
This positive evaluation may have abruptly changed last week, when the politicking for the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen reached a fever pitch and the true colors of Giorgia Meloni became apparent.
It started with the EU Parliament’s approval of a resolution of support for Ukraine. Meloni’s MEPs voted in support of the resolution but abstained from supporting the section of the resolution “supporting the elimination of any restrictions for Ukraine to use Western military support against military targets in Russian territory.” While no explanation was offered for such a decision on the day of the vote, back in February during a debate on the same issue in the Italian Parliament, Meloni stated the need to avoid any escalation of the Ukraine War, upsetting some of her party’s European allies. Then Meloni and her MEPs also abstained from supporting the EU resolution against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s visit to Russia as it constituted a “blatant violation of the EU’s Treaties and common foreign policy.” Meloni justified the abstention on her conviction that EU leaders should be free to “pursue peace missions,” which is what Orbán’s visit to Moscow was, at least in her view. While EU resolutions are not legally binding, those that pertain to Ukraine are seen as morally binding. Such abstentions are relevant and perhaps telling of the true extent of Meloni’s support for Ukraine.
Then, after almost two years of building up her credentials as a stateswoman willing to work with the EU’s mainstream political forces, Meloni’s vote against the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission unambiguously sided her with the far-right factions of the European Parliament, who detest the Commission chief and her policies. Meloni explained her decision in a 49 second Instagram reel, by stating that the vote was “coherent with Italy’s political positions vis à vis what the Commission chief’s proposed policies, and the fact that Italy had been snubbed a few weeks earlier, when not invited to the closed doors negotiations for some of the key EU commissioners’ nominations.” Meloni continued “we did this despite the collaborative spirit that has characterized our relationship with von der Leyen. Yet, the search for a consensus on the left, extended to the greens, did not make it possible to support her re-election. To vote for von der Leyen would have been like voting against our principles.”
Von der Leyen’s proposed policies, however, are only at odds with Fratelli d’Italia and the European far right, not with Italy's interests. Meloni’s Instagram reel highlighted the fact that she stills talks and acts as the leader of the Italian right rather than the leader of Italy, thus using every opportunity to campaign for Fratelli d’Italia and remind Italians of her political ambitions. According to Meloni, von der Leyen’s European Green Deal equals ecological ideology and the destruction of the industrial sector; her migration and asylum reforms equal unprotected borders in Europe; her focus on the rule of law and strong budget discipline equals an attack on national sovereignty; and worst of all, her proposals to strengthen the political union of the EU equals a steppingstone towards a federalist superstate.
By voting against von der Leyen, Meloni places herself firmly outside the ruling majority and unmistakably pairs herself with the likes of France’s National Rally and Spain’s Vox. Meloni’s vote against von der Leyen also openly supports a hard Euroskeptic agenda with the goal of reducing the EU to an intergovernmental organization, where sovereignty remains exclusively with the member states, direct elections to the European parliament are abolished, and its members delegated by national legislatures instead.
Meloni’s carefully crafted image of a pragmatic and constructive voice that can be reasoned with is fading and quickly yielding to that of a stubborn Euroskeptic. This raises the question of whether this shift will be enough to convince EU counterparts that Meloni is simply doing her party’s and the far right’s bidding for a lesser EU and, as such, she should not be trusted either at home or abroad.
Giovanna Maria Dora Dore is an Associate Professor with the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences of the Johns Hopkins University.
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