Giorgia Meloni

Biography

Giorgia Meloni was born in Rome in 1977 and grew up in the working-class district of Garbatella. At 15 she joined the Youth Front of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, and she later led the student movement of its successor party, National Alliance. She sat on the provincial council of Rome from 1998 to 2002 and in 2004 became the first woman to head the party's youth wing.

Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2006, she became its youngest vice-president. From 2008 to 2011 she was Minister for Youth Policies in Silvio Berlusconi's fourth government. In 2012 she co-founded Brothers of Italy, which she has led as president since 2014, and from 2020 to 2025 she also chaired the European Conservatives and Reformists Party.

Her party grew from a small opposition force into the largest in Italy and won the 2022 general election. In October 2022 she became the country's first woman prime minister, at the head of a right-wing coalition with the League and Forza Italia. Her government has stressed tighter migration control and justice reform, which it put to a constitutional referendum in March 2026.