How to Think about Giorgia Meloni, Four Years On

American Purpose

How to Think about Giorgia Meloni, Four Years On

Italy’s prime minister has lasted so long in office by abandoning almost everything she promised.

Giovanna Maria Dora Dore

Oct 28, 2026

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Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on June 25, 2026. (Photo by Manon Cruz / POOL / AFP via Getty Images.)

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On Friday, September 4, her 1,413

th

day at Palazzo Chigi, Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s longest consecutively serving prime minister since 1946. Given the habits of Italian politics, this is a remarkable achievement in its own right—and all the more surprising given how Meloni came to power. Her vision for Italy rested on disruptive, unworkable proposals that could have jeopardized Italy’s continued membership in the EU and the Euro. Everything suggested that the government she formed in October 2022 would prove as fragile and short-lived as so many before it. Instead, Meloni is celebrating her record with pomp and circumstance, and, with the parliament’s approval of a new electoral law nicknamed the Melonellum, her hold on power could extend even further.

Two years ago, when Meloni voted against Ursula von der Leyen’s reelection as president of the European Commission, the question was whether her carefully crafted image of a pragmatic leader would yield to that of a stubborn Euroskeptic doing the far right’s bidding for a lesser EU. The answer, four years into her premiership, is stranger and rather more deflating than either possibility. Meloni has remade neither Europe nor Italy. Instead, she has

just

lasted.

Several factors explain this outcome. First, due to a mix of political ineptitude, muddled thinking, and personal rivalries, Italy’s center-left political parties went into the 2022 election split three ways: the Democratic Party (Partito Democratico), the Greens and Left Alliance, and +Europa on one side; the “Third Pole” alliance between centrists led by Matteo Renzi and Carlo Calenda on the other; while the Five Star Movement ran on its own. Meloni won 26 percent of the vote for Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), and just around 44 percent of the right-wing coalition. The fragmentation of the center-left, however, allowed her to make the most of the electoral law’s rules and maximize her success in terms of parliamentary seats.

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The numbers behind the electoral results cannot be overstated, especially given the longevity of the Meloni government. Italy’s governments rise and fall depending on whether the legislature gives or withdraws its confidence in the government. However, to change a government, or even just to threaten its stability, there has to be a plausible alternative majority to the one in office. Since October 2022, there has not been one in Italy for two reasons. On the one hand, the electoral performance of Fratelli d’Italia, and of the right more generally, had been so sweeping that even imagining a different parliamentary configuration remained out of the question. On the other hand, over the last four years the center-left has not managed to present itself as a credible governing alternative. Fragmented, quarrelsome, and lacking a shared platform, the left wing parties have not offered a solid prospect at the national level, despite some important victories at the local level.

Meloni has also been skillful at keeping disagreements within her coalition from boiling over, granting Deputy Prime Ministers Matteo Salvini and Antonio Tajani small victories here and there, and mediating whenever tensions between them ran too high. She has also benefitted from the fact that neither Salvini nor Tajani could afford to challenge her leadership due to the need to manage their respective parties’ growing troubles and weaknesses. Nor could they attempt risky moves that would have toppled Meloni’s government, as the parliamentary arithmetic did not allow it. An ideal situation for any Italian prime minister.

Equally relevant, Meloni abandoned her long-held conviction that leaving the EU and the Euro would be beneficial for Italy. The idea of leaving the Euro was disavowed almost immediately after Meloni became prime minister, while her previous belligerent pronouncements against the EU were replaced by a subtle effort to build a working relationship with Ursula von der Leyen. Her hostility to austerity and compliance with EU budget constraints has also quietly dissipated, meaning that the very principles Meloni had bitterly and relentlessly opposed for years have become the cornerstone of her government’s economic policy. As a result, Italy’s fiscal credibility has improved as budget restraint brought the deficit to roughly 3.1 percent. This is in spite of the public debt-to-GDP ratio remaining among the highest in the EU,

projected

at 138.5% to 138.9% by the end of 2026.

Likewise, Meloni’s openly stated sympathies for Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in Syria and Vladimir Putin’s Russia gave way to a gregarious cooperation with the United States, even during the Biden administration.

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An earnest review of the performance of the Meloni government suggests that its historical longevity is a matter of survival rather than accomplishment. Or,

in the words

of Tito Boeri: “This government has primarily sought to survive by doing as little as possible.”

Growth and investment is where the Meloni government has nothing to show. ISTAT data show that between 2023 and 2026, industrial production declined and, according to the OECD and the International Monetary Fund, Italy’s growth,

forecasted

at 0.9 percent for 2026, remains one of the weakest in the EU. Further, between 2021 and 2026, Italy received the

lion’s share

of the EU Recovery and Resilience funds, yet the Meloni government did not succeed in leveraging them to stimulate long-term growth beyond limited success in controlling Italy’s debt. Opposition leaders have highlighted Meloni’s decision to settle for small reforms rather than tackling structural economic issues.

The government’s ambitious institutional reform agenda fared no better, either having stalled or failed. The

premierato

, Meloni’s flagship reform for the direct election of the prime minister, was abandoned after its first approval in the Senate. While Meloni did not offer any explanation for this choice, the opposition has suggested that seeking approval of the parliament’s lower chamber would have been an expensive political gamble. The

Autonomia Differenziata

reform, which would have allowed regions to negotiate greater administrative and legislative powers from the central government in policy areas such as infrastructure, environment, health, and education, was also

dropped

after the Constitutional Court largely gutted the original proposal. Finally, 53 percent of voters rejected the reforms separating the career tracks for judges and prosecutors in last March’s confirmatory referendum.

Notably, Meloni accepted these defeats and stated that the government would keep working on the issues. In doing so, she avoided repeating her predecessor Matteo Renzi’s mistake. In 2016, he staked his premiership on a constitutional referendum for his own institutional reforms. When 59 percent of the voters rejected them, the defeat became his own; he had no choice but to resign. Meloni, meanwhile, kept her office separate from the fate of her reforms, thus ensuring that any failure would remain a political setback rather than a personal one.

Migration is one of the areas where Meloni’s record is contested. While, between 2022 and 2025, illegal migrants’ arrivals

fell

29 percent and repatriations rose 52 percent, agreements with Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, as well as the Italy-Albania migration protocol, have proven operationally disappointing and, to date, remain tangled in court without a clear timeline for final resolution. Meloni claims that her government’s migration policies have moved the EU closer to what Italy’s political right wants. However, while the EU’s “New Pact on Migration and Asylum” took effect on June 12, 2026, the legislative process began in September 2020, long before Meloni was in a position to influence the process in any significant way. In fact, by the time Meloni became prime minister, the negotiations were already going in a direction she could accept. When it comes to migration policies, Meloni’s most durable accomplishment may lie elsewhere at the EU level, specifically in von der Leyen’s endorsement of the Italy-Albania model and support for return hubs outside the EU, as well as the fact that Germany, Greece, and the Netherlands are beginning to explore similar arrangements.

Civil liberties are where the Meloni government faces the sharpest criticism. In the Reporters Without Borders Index, Italy

fell

from 45

th

to 49

th

place in 2025, and from 49

th

to 56

th

in 2026, a particularly poor rating considering that the majority of EU countries rank in the top thirty. RWB points to loss of journalistic independence, unprecedented political pressure against journalists and media outlets, and censorship at RAI, Italy’s national public broadcaster. These are combined with strategic lawsuits against public participation—often filed by Meloni herself to counter or silence criticism against her government—and deliberate efforts to block the distribution of media content by local and national authorities. Further, for the second year in a row, a Liberties report has

included

Italy in the notorious group of rule of law dismantlers—“governments that consistently and intentionally weaken the rule of law across most areas.” Meloni’s supporters dismiss such criticism on the basis of the traditional dynamics of Italian majoritarian politics as well as

lottizzazione

, a historically established practice where control of RAI and other agencies is divided among political parties as spoils.

In April 2025, the Meloni government approved Executive Decree Law 48/2025, a criminal justice reform package almost identical to an earlier judicial reform bill the government had watched languish in parliament, which was also heavily criticized by legal experts, magistrates, and representatives of the police. Then, in February 2026, Executive Decree 54/2026

followed

to introduce additional measures to strengthen public order and security. While Meloni presented the reform package as a necessary step to protect Italians, her decision to bypass a parliamentary debate and adequate consultations has been heavily criticized domestically and internationally. Democratic Party senator Francesco Boccia

told

reporters, “We challenge a government that wants to imprison children, students who strike and protesters outside factories.” Likewise, Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights,

asked

the Italian Parliament not to approve the criminal justice reform package and said: “The rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, are a cornerstone of democratic society. The bill, if adopted, would not only violate such fundamental freedoms, but would be contrary to the principles of the rule of law.”

Four years ago

, the question was whether Meloni could be trusted at home as much as she seemed to be trusted abroad. Her governing record suggests a negative answer. The longevity of her government has been achieved by giving up most of what she was elected for. Her agenda of Faith, Family, and Nation survives in the content of her legislative agenda, especially the security decrees, her off-the-cuff remarks, which betray the fact that she never stopped seeing herself as leader of the Italian right rather than the prime minister of Italy, and the political acrobatics she performs to avoid dissent internal to her coalition from boiling over. In July 2025, to convey the challenges of governing Italy, Meloni

stated

that “every day for me is a parachute jump.” Undoubtedly, she hopes to be rewarded for the effort and energy she puts in navigating such challenges, as she has already announced that she is ready to run again.

What remains to be seen is what she would do with her longevity, should a second term ever free her from

merely

lasting.

Giovanna Maria Dora Dore is an Associate Professor with the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences of the Johns Hopkins University.

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A guest post by

Giovanna Maria Dora Dore

Giovanna Maria Dora Dore is an Associate Professor with the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences of the Johns Hopkins University. Earlier in her career, Dr Dore worked at the World Bank and the UNHCR.