Giorgia Meloni has formed Italy\u2019s new ruling coalition, giving the country its first far right-led government since the end of the second world war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A presidential palace official announced that Meloni, set to become the first woman to serve as the country\u2019s prime minister, and her cabinet would be sworn in on Saturday. Meloni\u2019s Brothers of Italy, a party with neo-fascist roots, was the top vote-winner in\u00a0Italy\u2019s national election\u00a0last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few hours before the new government\u2019s formation was announced, Meloni, 45, a career politician, told reporters that she and her allies had unanimously asked President Sergio Mattarella to give her the mandate to govern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Obtaining the premiership capped a remarkably quick rise for Brothers of Italy. Meloni co-founded the party in December 2012, and it was considered a fringe movement on the right during its first years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meloni made no public comments before leaving the Quirinal presidential palace. Earlier in the day, she met with Mattarella, along with her two main,\u00a0sometimes troublesome, rightwing allies\u00a0\u2013 Matteo Salvini and the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.Italy: Berlusconi calls Meloni \u2018patronising\u2019 and \u2018bossy\u2019 as relations frayRead more<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mattarella told reporters the government was formed in \u201cbrief time\u201d following the 25 September election. After the last election, in 2018, it took three months for a new ruling coalition to come together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Quickly giving the country a new government \u201cwas possible due to the clarity of the vote outcome and to the need to proceed swiftly also because of the domestic and international conditions that require a government in its fullness to carry out its tasks\u201d, Mattarella said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Italy and much of the rest of Europe are struggling with soaring energy costs and the drama of Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine, which could crimp gas supplies this winter and continue increasing household and business power bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Berlusconi and Salvini are longtime admirers of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, while Meloni staunchly backs Ukraine in its defence against the Russian invasion. Those differences could produce challenges for their governing coalition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Berlusconi, a three-time prime minister, had chafed at the election victory of Meloni\u2019s party. Brothers of Italy took 26% of the vote, while Berlusconi\u2019s Forza Italia and the anti-migrant League of Salvini snagged just more than 8% each in an election with a record low turnout. In 2018, when Italy held its previous parliamentary election, Meloni\u2019s party took just over 4%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, while her party\u2019s members are the largest force in the Italian parliament, Meloni needs the support of her two allies to command a majority.Italy\u2019s Giorgia Meloni is no Mussolini \u2013 but she may be a Trump | Lorenzo MarsiliRead more<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Berlusconi, who fancies himself a rare leader on the world stage, recently called her \u201carrogant\u201d in written comments, apparently after Meloni refused to make one of the media mogul\u2019s closest advisers a government minister.
This week, during a meeting with Forza Italia\u2019s lawmakers, the former prime minister expressed sympathy for Putin\u2019s motivation in invading Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A recording of the conversation leaked to Italian news agency LaPresse also captured Berlusconi\u00a0bragging that Putin had sent him bottles of vodka for his 86th birthday last month\u00a0and that he had given the Russian leader bottles of wine, while the two exchanged \u201csweetly worded\u201d notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In response to Berlusconi\u2019s comments, which included derogatory remarks about the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Meloni said that anyone joining her government must be solidly in sync with the west in opposing Putin\u2019s war. If that meant her government could not be formed, Meloni said, she would take that risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a bulwark against possible wavering on Ukraine by her coalition allies, Meloni named as defence minister one of her closest advisers, Brothers of Italy co-founder Guido Crosetto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She chose Antonio Tajani as foreign minister, one of Berlusconi\u2019s top aides in Forza Italia and a former president of the European Union\u2019s parliament. His pro-EU background could reassure European partners worried about a Meloni government wavering in its international alliances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Thursday, Mattarella received opposition leaders, who raised concerns that Meloni, who campaigned with a \u201cGod, homeland, family\u201d agenda, would seek to erode abortion rights and roll back rights such as same-sex civil unions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Giorgia Meloni has formed Italy\u2019s new ruling coalition, giving the country its first far right-led government since the end of the second world war. A presidential palace official announced that Meloni, set to become the first woman to serve as the country\u2019s prime minister, and her cabinet would be sworn in on Saturday. Meloni\u2019s Brothers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":26706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6493,10956,12487,8713,3782,12758,8590,911,5494,159,6621,9505,1195,5455,8008,12210,5345,5798,3545,5491,8016,1445,2264,10954,5252,9259,1392,9765,11743,9833,8007,6461,12287,11973,1198,2627,3805,11377,3174,71,5807,3457,5217,7584,10023,5180,5555,7231,10885,694,6886,5251,8964,5273,36,594,6874],"class_list":["post-26705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-abortion","tag-abortion-rights","tag-agenda","tag-birthday","tag-cabinet","tag-captured","tag-conversation","tag-election","tag-energy","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-family","tag-far-right","tag-female","tag-foreign-minister","tag-former-italian-prime-minister-silvio-berlusconi","tag-founder","tag-gas","tag-giorgia-meloni","tag-god","tag-government","tag-international","tag-invasion","tag-italian","tag-italy","tag-leaked","tag-majority","tag-meeting","tag-meloni","tag-migrant","tag-movement","tag-one","tag-parliament","tag-pm","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-prime-minister","tag-putin","tag-risk","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-sex","tag-take-that","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian","tag-union","tag-victory","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","tag-war","tag-winter","tag-woman","tag-world","tag-who","tag-zelenskiy"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}