102 Facts About Giorgia Meloni

Giorgia Meloni is the first woman to hold the office.

In 1992 Meloni joined the Youth Front, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, a neo-fascist political party founded in 1946 by followers of Italian fascism.

Giorgia Meloni later became the national leader of Student Action, the student movement of the National Alliance, a post-fascist party that became the MSI's legal successor in 1995 and moved towards national conservatism.

Giorgia Meloni 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.

Giorgia Meloni unsuccessfully ran in the 2014 European Parliament election and the 2016 Rome municipal election.

Giorgia Meloni is a Catholic and a conservative, and believes in defending "God, fatherland and family".

Giorgia Meloni supported a naval blockade to halt illegal immigration, and she has been described as xenophobic and Islamophobic by some critics.

Giorgia Meloni 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.

Giorgia Meloni was born on 15 January 1977 in Rome, Italy.

Giorgia Meloni's father was a tax advisor and according to some political profiles had communist sympathies and voted for the Italian Communist Party, while her mother later became a novelist.

Giorgia Meloni's father abandoned the family in 1978 when she was one year old, moving to the Canary Islands and remarrying.

Giorgia Meloni last contacted Meloni in 2006, when she became the vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies.

Legal documents have recently revealed a controversial indirect economic link through a network of real estate companies in which the ex-wife Anna Paratore, mother of Giorgia Meloni, was a partner at various times.

Giorgia Meloni was raised in the working-class district of Garbatella in Rome, moving there after the more affluent home she had first lived in as an infant with her parents was destroyed in a house fire a few years after her father left.

Giorgia Meloni's upbringing has been described by her family as impoverished.

Giorgia Meloni has a sister, Arianna, who was born in 1975 and is married to Francesco Lollobrigida, the Italian Minister of Agriculture since 22 October 2022.

In 1992, at 15 years of age, Giorgia Meloni joined the Youth Front, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, a neo-fascist political party that dissolved in 1995.

In 1998, after winning the primary election, Giorgia Meloni was elected as a councillor of the province of Rome, holding this position until 2002.

Giorgia Meloni was elected national director in 2000 and became the first woman president of Youth Action, the AN youth wing, in 2004.

Giorgia Meloni graduated from Istituto tecnico professionale di Stato Amerigo Vespucci in 1996.

Giorgia Meloni mentioned that the Hospitality Institute she attended became the Centro di Formazione Professionale Ernesto Nathan issuing diplomas in foreign languages.

In 2006, Giorgia Meloni defended the laws passed by the third Berlusconi government that benefited companies of the prime minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi and delayed ongoing trials involving him.

Giorgia Meloni was the second youngest-ever minister in the history of united Italy.

Giorgia Meloni was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Lombardy and was later appointed the party's leader in the house, a position that she would hold until 2014, when she resigned to dedicate herself to the party.

On 19 February 2021, the University of Siena professor Giovanni Gozzini insulted Giorgia Meloni calling her vulgar names from a radio; both the President Sergio Mattarella and the Prime Minister Mario Draghi phoned Giorgia Meloni and stigmatised Gozzini, who was suspended by the board of his university.

In October 2021, Giorgia Meloni signed the Madrid Charter, a 2020 document that describes left-wing groups as enemies of Ibero-America involved in a "criminal project" that are "under the umbrella of the Cuban regime".

Giorgia Meloni told the attending American conservative activists and officials they must defend their views against progressives.

Giorgia Meloni campaigned for lower taxes, less European bureaucracy, and a halt to illegal immigration through a naval blockade, saying she would put national interests first.

Giorgia Meloni was projected to be the winner of the election with FdI receiving a plurality of seats, and per agreement with the centre-right coalition, which held that the largest party in the coalition would nominate the next prime minister, she was the frontrunner and would become the country's first female prime minister.

Observers have debated how right-wing a Giorgia Meloni-led government would be, and which label and position on the political spectrum would be more accurate or realistic.

Giorgia Meloni succeeded in being elected by obtaining 116 votes out of 206 in the first round thanks to the support from opposition parties to the centre-right coalition.

Giorgia Meloni is the first woman to hold the office of Prime Minister of Italy.

Giorgia Meloni thanked several Italian women including Tina Anselmi, Samantha Cristoforetti, Grazia Deledda, Oriana Fallaci, Nilde Iotti, Rita Levi-Montalcini, and Maria Montessori, who she said, "with the boards of their own examples, built the ladder that today allows me to climb and break the heavy glass ceiling placed over our heads".

The Giorgia Meloni government has rejected the accusations and announced that it will accept minor changes to the text in Parliament.

On 12 August 2024, Giorgia Meloni characterised as "surrealist" the court case initiated by the European Commission over the Italian government's social policy that favoured Italians over recent non-citizen immigrants.

In late December 2022, Giorgia Meloni announced that Elisabetta Casellati, Minister for Constitutional Reforms, would meet with the opposition parties to officially begin the roadmap towards a constitutional reform to strengthen the powers of the Prime Minister, even if the coalition's electoral program included only the direct election of the president.

The first foreign leader met by Giorgia Meloni was the French president Emmanuel Macron, who was in Rome on 23 October 2023 to meet President Sergio Mattarella and Pope Francis, and had a bilateral meeting with Giorgia Meloni, primarily focused on the ongoing energy crisis and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On 3 November 2023, Giorgia Meloni met European Union leaders such as Ursula von der Leyen, Charles Michel, Paolo Gentiloni, Roberta Metsola, and other politicians in Brussels.

On 7 November 2023, Giorgia Meloni took part in her first international summit, the United Nations COP27 in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt.

In January 2023, Giorgia Meloni visited Algeria, where she met President Abdelmadjid Tebboune with whom she signed a deal regarding gas supply to Italy.

On 22 February 2023, Giorgia Meloni visited Ukraine and met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss about the ongoing Russian invasion.

Giorgia Meloni visited Bucha, in the suburbs of Kyiv, where the Russian forces killed more than 400 Ukrainians in March 2022.

On 2 March 2023, Giorgia Meloni visited India, where she met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Droupadi Murmu.

Giorgia Meloni was the first Western leader to visit Ethiopia since the end of the Tigray War.

In May 2023, Giorgia Meloni attended the 49th G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan.

Giorgia Meloni considered withdrawing from China's Belt and Road Initiative.

On 28 April 2024, Giorgia Meloni announced that she would run for a seat in the European Parliament in elections due to be held in June.

On 18 October 2024, Giorgia Meloni traveled to Lebanon and assured the solidarity of Italy with Lebanon and UNIFIL in the current conflict.

Giorgia Meloni's arrest came three days after Italy arrested Iranian engineer Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi at Milan Malpensa Airport at the request of the United States, which accused him, together with an accomplice arrested in the country, of conspiring to circumvent embargoes and supplying sophisticated electronic components from the United States to Iran.

On 8 January 2025, Giorgia Meloni announced that Sala had been released by Iranian authorities and had left the country, landing at Rome Ciampino Airport on Wednesday afternoon, where she was welcomed by Giorgia Meloni herself.

Giorgia Meloni received a warm welcome from Trump, who praised her conservative stances and accepted her invitation for a state visit in Italy.

Additionally, Giorgia Meloni has been described as hard right, right-wing populist, and nationalist.

Giorgia Meloni has been described as being close to Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary and leader of Fidesz, and Rishi Sunak, the former British Prime Minister and Conservatives leader.

Giorgia Meloni has self-described her political party, Brothers of Italy, as a mainstream conservative party.

Giorgia Meloni is in favour of presidentialism and supports changes to the Constitution of Italy.

In June 2024, Giorgia Meloni criticised the EU ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035 that would "condemn [Europe] to new strategic dependencies, such as China's electric [vehicles]".

Giorgia Meloni opposes abortion, euthanasia, and laws that recognise same-sex marriage, and describes herself as "pro-family".

Giorgia Meloni has said she "wouldn't change" the abortion law in Italy but wanted to apply more fully the part of the law "about prevention", such as permitting doctors to refuse to carry them out.

Giorgia Meloni stated that the recognition of same-sex unions in Italy is good enough, and she said it was something she would not change; in 2016, while she said she would respect the law if elected mayor of Rome, she had supported a referendum to abrogate the civil union law.

Giorgia Meloni has opposed the 1993 Mancino law, a hate speech law.

Giorgia Meloni is opposed to the DDL Zan, an anti-homophobia law that would expand the Mancino law to cover LGBT discrimination, declaring in 2020 that "there is no homophobia" in Italy.

Giorgia Meloni is opposed to surrogacy, which is pejoratively known in Italian as utero in affitto, and she has pushed in Parliament for a law to make it a "universal crime"; her efforts have been endorsed by the Catholic Church and by Pope Francis himself.

Giorgia Meloni is supportive of the anti-gender movement, based on Catholic theology in the 1990s that condemns gender studies, and she is sceptical of what she calls "gender ideology"; she says it is being taught in schools, and that it attacks female identity and motherhood.

Giorgia Meloni is supportive of changing the Constitution of Italy to make it illegal for same-sex couples to adopt children.

The possibility of Giorgia Meloni becoming the first woman to become Prime Minister of Italy had been widely discussed both prior to and after the 2022 Italian general election.

Giorgia Meloni has criticised Italy's approach towards illegal immigrants, calling for a zero-tolerance policy.

Giorgia Meloni wants to blockade illegal immigrants from reaching Italian ports, and boost the birth rate of Italian nationals to ease the need for migrant labour.

Giorgia Meloni is opposed to birthright citizenship proposals, which would give citizenship including education rights to foreigners born and living in Italy.

Amid the 2022 escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Giorgia Meloni said she supported giving refugee status to those coming from a war-shaken country but not to other asylum seekers.

Giorgia Meloni has blamed neo-colonialism for Africa's underdevelopment and the 2015 European migrant crisis, and she said she favours co-operation over what she termed France's neocolonialism.

Giorgia Meloni has been considered as opposed to the reception of illegal immigrants, as well as to multiculturalism, and she has been described as xenophobic, as well as Islamophobic, by some critics.

Giorgia Meloni believes there is a planned mass migration from Africa to Europe for the purpose of replacing and eliminating Italians, an antisemitic, white genocide, and far-right conspiracy theory known as the Kalergi Plan.

Giorgia Meloni has described pro-immigration policies as part of an alleged left-wing conspiracy to "replace Italians with immigrants".

Giorgia Meloni complained about the danger of ethnic substitution in her 2019 book on the Nigerian mafia, co-written with Alessandro Meluzzi, anti-vaccine psychiatrist, founder of the "Anti-Islamisation Party" and at the time primate of a schismatic Italian Orthodox Church.

Giorgia Meloni wanted to make a deal with Tunisian president Kais Saied with a focus on stopping illegal immigration from Tunisia to Europe.

Giorgia Meloni declared that she wrote to the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen "to ask her to come with me to Lampedusa to personally realize the gravity of the situation we face, and to immediately accelerate the implementation of the agreement with Tunisia by transferring the agreed resources".

Giorgia Meloni followed the PdL party line in favour of the 2011 military intervention in Libya; however, in 2019, she criticised the French rationale for the intervention, stating it was because of Muammar Gaddafi's opposition to the CFA franc.

Giorgia Meloni was critical of Italian relations with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, stating that these countries "systematically and deliberately spread fundamentalist theories that are the main causes of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism".

Giorgia Meloni opposed the decision to host the Supercoppa Italiana final in Saudi Arabia, and stated that Italy should actively raise the issue of human rights in Saudi Arabia.

However, upon taking office, Giorgia Meloni reversed her position, with her government stating it was "keen to maintain the excellent relationship with Saudi Arabia" yet still calling for a "firm reaction" against Qatar to which several Italians were accused of involvement in Qatargate.

In 2021, Giorgia Meloni stated her party "denounced the authoritarian, Islamist direction Erdogan's Turkey has taken for years and asked the EU to withdraw Ankara's status as a candidate country", but upon taking office, pursued closer ties with the Turkish government, due to Italy's interests in Libya, cooperation in stopping illegal immigration, shared nationalist values and common disagreement with French foreign policy.

Giorgia Meloni advocated for the expulsion of the Indian Ambassador to Italy as a result of the Enrica Lexie case, and she urged Alessandro Del Piero to refuse to play in the Indian Super League until the detained Italian marines were returned.

Giorgia Meloni has since condemned the invasion and pledged to keep sending arms to Ukraine, and moved towards Atlanticism.

Giorgia Meloni is supportive of NATO, although she maintains Eurosceptic views towards the EU, having previously advocated a withdrawal from the eurozone.

Giorgia Meloni rejects the Eurosceptic label, favouring the Eurorealism of a confederal Europe of sovereign nations.

Giorgia Meloni is a controversial figure in Croatia due to her Italian irredentist statements in which she claimed Dalmatia and Istria, and for being opposed to Croatian entry into the EU due to the unresolved dispute concerning properties of exiled Italians after World War II from these two Croatian regions.

Giorgia Meloni has not apologized to African nations for wrongs committed during the Italian colonial period, but is vocally critical of the legacy of the French colonial empire in Africa, arguing that France continues to exploit its former colonies through the CFA Franc.

Giorgia Meloni has exhibited support for vaccine hesitancy, such as not vaccinating her daughter during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy because "it's not a religion".

In May 2020, Giorgia Meloni praised Almirante as a "great politician", as well as "a patriot".

Giorgia Meloni was the co-founder of the Italian Social Movement, who had a long post-war political career until retiring in 1987.

In November 2018, Meloni declared that the celebration of the Liberation Day, known as the Anniversary of Italy's Liberation from Nazi-Fascism on 25 April, and, which celebrates the birth of the Italian Republic on 2 June, should be substituted with the National Unity and Armed Forces Day on 4 November, which commemorates Italy's victory in World War I She said that Liberation Day and are "two controversial celebrations".

Giorgia Meloni has tried to distance herself from her ties to Roberto Jonghi Lavarini, a Milanese politician and entrepreneur known as the "Black Baron".

FdI's co-founder Ignazio La Russa rejected this view, and Giorgia Meloni ignored the request, keeping the tricolour flame.

In July 2024, Giorgia Meloni was awarded damages in a defamation lawsuit against journalist Giulia Cortese, who in October 2021 had posted a photo of Giorgia Meloni on Twitter, now X, which was altered to show with Mussolini in the background.

In 2015, Giorgia Meloni began a relationship with Andrea Giambruno, a journalist working for Mediaset TV channels.

Giorgia Meloni added that "all those who hoped to weaken [her] by attacking [her] personal life should know that however much the drop of water tries to dig out the stone, the stone remains stone and the drop is only water".

Giorgia Meloni is a Catholic and has used her religious identity in part to help build her national brand.

Giorgia Meloni has said she resents being linked to Italy's fascist past.

That same year, Giorgia Meloni received the Atlantic Council's Global Citizen Award.

Giorgia Meloni has been a member of Parliament since 2006, being most recently re-elected in 2022.

Giorgia Meloni won first-past-the-post elections for a parliamentary seat in both 2018 and 2022.

Giorgia Meloni lost the municipal election to become mayor of Rome in 2016.