Five years ago, when her party won 6% of the vote in the European Parliament elections, Giorgia Meloni tried to pop a bottle of sparkling wine, but the cork failed embarrassingly among some supporters.
This week, Ms Meloni, now Italy’s prime minister, emerged as the big winner in the election. She and dozens of members of the Brothers of Italy party celebrated at a five-star hotel in Rome, where waiters carried bottles of wine in silver basins. The far-right party received nearly 29% of the vote. The victory was particularly significant because Ms Meloni was the only leader in a major Western European country to gain support at the polls.
For Ms. Meloni, the elevator came at the perfect time. All eyes are on Italy this week as Ms Meloni prepares to host a three-day G7 summit of major economies starting on Thursday. This is another opportunity to make yourself a legitimate member of the world’s most influential club of leaders.
“This country goes into the G7 and Europe with the strongest government,” she told supporters earlier on Monday after the results were announced. “They can’t stop us.”
When she becomes prime minister in 2022, she will send shivers down the spine of the European establishment because of her far-right, Eurosceptic identity and post-fascist roots. The agency now sees her as a pragmatic partner on key international issues.
Ms. Meloni’s approach sets an example for other far-right leaders seeking to enter the mainstream.
In France, Marine Le Pen has softened her stance on key issues and improved her image. Her National Rally party performed so strongly in the European elections, winning more than 30% of the vote, that French President Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called new parliamentary elections.
“Georgia Meloni’s government has polluted Europe badly,” Italian Brotherhood lawmaker Giovanni Donzelli said late Sunday. “A wall came down across Europe – they realized that the right could govern well.”
In recent months, Europe’s center-right parties and parties further to the right trying to build a nationalist united front have courted Ms Meloni as a potential ally.
While the center stage is in the new European Parliament, Ms Meloni is likely to remain a key figure in individual votes, including most immediately the re-election of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who needs to be approved by the European Parliament .
Experts say Ms Meloni may decide to back Ms von der Leyen as a way to exert greater influence in Brussels.
“Meloni will be a major player in Europe,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group Consultants. “When Meloni leans to the center and is constructive, she will get a lot back.”
On the wider international stage, Ms. Meloni has also established herself as a key figure in support of issues such as Ukraine, setting her apart from others on the far right who are more pro-Russian.
That puts her in a strong position among Western leaders who will gather in Italy’s southern Puglia region this week, especially after the election.
“All eyes are on her,” said political scientist Roberto Dalimonte of Rome’s Luis Guido Cali University. “Her profile has been elevated even more.”
G7 attendees include President Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Ms von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel are also scheduled to attend.
Ms. Meloni also invited Pope Francis; Ukrainian President Zelensky; India’s newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi; Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and others, including several African leaders people. She vowed that the focus of the summit would be on her development and cooperation plans with Africa.
The meeting will be held at Borgo Egnazia, a luxury resort with a sparkling swimming pool surrounded by rosemary bushes and olive trees. Its stone townhouses and villas are filled with baskets of almonds and lemons, and its narrow alleys, lined with rusty bicycles and wooden chariots, bear the traces of time.
It’s just that the whole place was built in the early 2000s, and the land was razed by Mussolini to build an air force base. The resort recreates ancient Apulian towns and farmhouses, with some locals likening it to a Mediterranean Potemkin village.
World leaders will follow guests who are getting married at the resort, including Madonna, the Beckhams, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel.
“Meloni wants to impress, and I’m sure she will,” said Romeo Di Bari, 41, a shop owner in the town of Alberobello. Friends plan to visit the town, and on a recent afternoon the boyfriends knelt on the cobblestones to take photos of their girlfriends as they twirled in one of the region’s unique steepled trulli huts.
In the nearby city of Bari, locals praised Ms Meloni for bringing new prestige to their region and country.
“Our country is leading the way,” said Giovanni Pirlo, 68, a retired surveyor. “Our country has always been marginalized; now Meloni has brought about some change.
Ms. Meloni has played a delicate balancing act by joining the European establishment on international issues while pleasing supporters at home by taking tough stances on abortion or LGBT rights, spending little in Europe (and cash).
She also juggled her roles as a people’s woman and an international statesman. She insisted on being on a first-name basis with Italians, urging them to write “Georgia” on their ballot papers, and claimed she defended Italian interests in Brussels by helping pass conservative policies on immigration and the environment.
At home, Ms. Meloni leads a stable coalition and has the support of two weaker parties that desperately need her to stay in power. Forza Italia, whose founder Silvio Berlusconi died last year, has held séance-like events with Berlusconi’s name and photo on billboards. campaign, garnering around 10% of the vote in the European Parliament elections. Matteo Salvini’s League party, which attracts support from voters to the right of Ms Meloni, saw its share of the vote fall to 9% this year from 34% in 2019.
Experts say the biggest challenge facing Italy’s nationalist leader may be her country.
Compared with the European Union, Italy’s productivity lags and wages have largely stagnated. Despite job growth, youth unemployment remains high in the south, with tens of thousands of young Italians leaving the country every year.
In the town of Saviletri, a resort hosted by the Group of Seven, locals spent time in cafes near two new heliports and military trucks patrolled.
Fisherman Stefanano Martellotta, 51, said he was less concerned about what he called the G7 “show”. His concern is that his two sons, aged 22 and 27, will have to move to the Netherlands to work in restaurant kitchens because “no one gives them a dignified salary” in Italy, he said.
“It’s dramatic for us, our young people are leaving us,” said Annamaria Santorsola, a 75-year-old mother and grandmother, adding that her area needed “job opportunities, Not the G7.”
