The first female Prime Minister of Italy: Giorgia Meloni, a politician and journalist, representing the Fratelli d’Italia, or Brothers of Italy, and serves as the head of the national-conservative and right-wing populist political party. Joining the bullpen of politics at a very early age as a Youth Front activist, Meloni was officially elected as a seat in the Chambers of Deputies in 2006. Meloni’s ties to the Youth Front activist group and her political party are heavily associated with neo-fascism– stemming from relations with the past party of Benito Mousslini, which included extreme nationalism, xenophobia, and imperialism. 

The Italian Prime Minister is elected by their political party. For perspective, in the U.S. many electoral candidates run and will drop out based on their popularity in initial polls and the primaries. Then come November, the final election takes place, which through the electoral college directly votes for the president based on the sway of their state district. In Italy, however, this process is reversed. Citizens only have a sway in the vote for the political party they see fit for the new term. Within each political party, members of the party will elect a president for the Fratelli d’Italia, since 2020, Meloni has served as the president. 

During the election period, Meloni’s party won with a clear majority of 44%. When discussing the new election with her family, Ines Morroni, the Admissions Office Manager at LFA and a dual citizen of Italy and the United States explained how, “… the election was driven by older voters, and in comparison to the older population wanting to vote directly against the old government, the younger populations took their stance against the government by not voting.”

With the newly instated Fratelli d’Italia, many worry about the direction that Italy is headed. Although it is, as Morroni described, “wonderful to have a woman Prime Minister, it is bittersweet with some of the new policies that she supports.”

Some of Meloni’s current polies address immigration and Italy’s rising taxes. Her focus for immigration is to slow down immigration “to protect those who play host to immigrants and those who really need us to welcome them,” as she reasoned in a recent campaign in Rome. She wants to cut down immigration to be able to better improve the economics of Italy. Meloni also stated that she wanted to cut taxes for national tax income. She believes that she can support the loss of revenue through cutting the “citizens wage” which gives impoverished citizens a source of income while they are unemployed. 

Although Meloni is proposing many extreme plans for Italy, Morroni expressed, “I have hope that her extremist views are not going to be implemented, I trust that the parliament will make a difference in passing her ideas… I just think it is great to finally have a female Prime Minister.”