Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on October 07, 2025 in Rome, Italy. Photo / Getty Images
In the shadow of the Castel Sant’Angelo, a short walk through the gridlocked streets of Rome, where priests weave through traffic on e-scooters, a strange event is taking place.
The grounds of the ancient fortress have been converted into a mix of winter wonderland and party conference, attracting geeky politicos and bemused families seeking Christmassy cheer.
Welcome to Atreju, the brainchild of Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s combative, cigarette-smoking Prime Minister and leading light of the European right.
Elon Musk has spoken here from a stage surrounded by the wooden stalls ubiquitous at Christmas markets. So has Rishi Sunak, the first – but not the last – British prime minister to be charmed by her.
As Roman families skated on an ice rink, sipped mulled wine or had their photos taken with Father Christmas and his elves, Kemi Badenoch, the British Tory leader, had a heart-to-heart with Meloni.
Badenoch said: “She is a force of nature but also warm and engaging. Like me, she says: ‘I’m not doing this for fame or fortune – I want to fix things’.
“Not that long ago, people were looking at Italy as the basket case of Europe. Now she is the leader of Europe.
“It’s no surprise that she is the person that Donald Trump rings up first. They have a very good relationship, and having this meeting with her, I can see why.”
Even the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a left-wing former human rights lawyer, praised Meloni’s “remarkable” work in cracking down on illegal migration after meeting the 48-year-old last year to take notes on how to “stop the boats”.
When it comes to her values or Italy’s national interest, Meloni will not bend for anyone.
She is also a shrewd and pragmatic political operator, whose statesmanship has impressed even her critics.
When she became Italy’s first female prime minister in October 2022, there were howls that she would lead the most hard-right government since Mussolini and crash the economy.
Now she is celebrating more than three years in the job – the longest stretch of any Italian leader since Silvio Berlusconi – in a rare period of political and economic stability.
Some extremists grumble that she has sold out to the “globalists”, but the 1.6m single mother from a working-class district of Rome is in the business of smashing expectations.
Wanda Ferro, an MEP for Meloni’s Brothers of Italy Party, said: “Giorgia is a warrior. She is a woman who keeps her promises, who doesn’t have skeletons in the cupboard.
“This is now the third-longest serving government in the history of the republic. We will, without doubt, complete our mandate. And I am certain she will win the next election.”
Meloni co-founded Brothers of Italy and has taken it from its fringe fascist roots to a seemingly unassailable place at the heart of the country’s famously chaotic politics.
In 2013, Brothers of Italy won 1.96% of the vote. In 2022, less than a decade later, it won the general election with 25.98%. In 2024, she won the European elections with an increased majority.
At Atreju’s festive stalls, Trump-style blue baseball caps with the slogan “We were born to turn predictions upside down” are on offer.
Between the crowds, a glass and metal column plays a constant loop of video footage showing Meloni meeting world leaders on her many international forays.
Instead of seasonal greetings, an inscription offers, with heavy irony: “The left said that under Meloni, Italy would be isolated internationally. Here’s that international isolation.”
There were fears that the Eurosceptic Meloni would declare war on Brussels and plunge Italy into isolation when she took over from the respected technocrat Mario Draghi.
Instead, she is dragging Europe to the right, winning disciples for her offshore migrant camps in Albania.
Even liberal and left-wing governments are taking their cue from Meloni on migration.
After meeting her, Starmer pledged €4.75 million ($9.6m) for her push to stop illegal migration at source by cracking down on people-smugglers, but also by tackling issues such as poverty and conflict in Africa.
His Government in December joined a Meloni-led demand for reforms to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to make it easier to deport migrants. That initiative has grown from an original nine countries to 27.
In parallel, Meloni secured agreement for tougher European Union asylum rules after hosting “migration summits” of leaders before European Council meetings in Brussels.
The twin-track approach is designed to clear the legal hurdles that have delayed her much-vaunted Albania plan. Frustrated by the law, she has moved to change it.
Albania 2.0 will see the camps turned into offshore detention centres for failed asylum seekers, rather than offshore centres for migrants picked up in the Mediterranean.
The Albania scheme is being held up as a model for Europe by pro-EU conservatives, including Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President.
Alessandro Ciriani, a Brothers of Italy MEP, said: “At home we have often been criticised by the left and yet we have become a model for European migration policy.”
Margaritis Schinas, a former European Commission vice-president who was in charge of migration, said: “Giorgia Meloni has turned out to be a far more constructive and pragmatic force than many expected. In practice, she has often behaved more responsibly on European and international issues than some leaders who brand themselves as ‘centrist’.”
She notched up another victory on December 16 after Brussels ended its plans for a ban on petrol cars by 2035 under pressure from Germany and Italy.
In the European Parliament, the Meloni-dominated European Conservatives and Reformists have worked with both the pro-EU centre-right and Eurosceptic hard-right to roll back net-zero rules.
Nathalie Tocci is the director of Italy’s Institute for International Affairs and a former special adviser to two EU foreign affairs chiefs.
She said: “She hasn’t moved to the centre in the slightest ... it’s the centre-right that has moved to the far-right.”
In 2021, when right-wing parties joined forces with the centre-left to form a unity government under Draghi, Meloni refused. She said that appointing an unelected former central banker was undemocratic.
It left the Brothers of Italy as the sole major party in opposition, and the only untried realistic alternative when the government fell just a year later. She now dominates a three-party coalition government.
Cartoonists in Italy delight in lampooning her, exaggerating her bug eyes and small stature, but there is no doubt Ms Meloni can charm foreign leaders.
Albania’s Edi Rama literally fell to his knees for her when he welcomed her to a Tirana summit on her 48th birthday.
Tocci, from the Institute for International Affairs, saw Meloni work her magic on India’s nationalist leader Narendra Modi first hand when she worked for the EU’s foreign affairs service.
The Italian prime minister, still finding her feet in office, began reading a speech prepared for her by her diplomats.
Tocci said: “At some point, she kind of looked up, she obviously threw the script away and just looked at him and just started going on about civilisation and culture. And you could see, he was like, ‘wow’!”
The pair, dubbed “Melodi”, practically broke the internet after posting a joint video in 2024. It racked up 2.6 million views in less than two hours and she retains a huge following in India.
Francesco Galietti, the founder of the think-tank Policy Sonar, said: “She can pull this off with both Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen and whoever. Everyone comes out thinking they know the real Meloni.”
Europe still hopes she can be the EU’s “Trump-whisperer” on the thorny issues of trade and the war in Ukraine. She was the only EU leader invited to Trump’s inauguration, but so far has little to show for the special relationship beyond warm words.
In January, 13 major Italian pasta producers will face a 92% tariff on top of the 15% tax Trump has levied on all goods from Europe. Tocci said: “She hasn’t even whispered successfully on behalf of Italy”.
There is no public appetite for Italian boots on the ground in Ukraine. Italy is a standoffish member of the Coalition of the Willing led by the UK, France and Germany.
Matteo Salvini, the Putin-admiring leader of coalition party the League, has unhelpfully declared that the war is lost, demanding that Ukraine sue for terms.
Italian defence spending was just 1.5% of GDP last year, below the Nato target of 5% that Trump has demanded.
A new Budget promises that a spending goal of 2% will be reached. But that will require some creative accounting, with a planned €13 billion suspension bridge to Sicily and military pension payments counting towards the tally.
Away from the ruins of ancient Rome and the red carpets of international diplomacy is Garbatella, a left-wing working-class district of Rome.
This is where Meloni was made, amid the faded grandeur of a suburb built between the wars to house railway workers and now pockmarked with the odd 1970s high-rise.
“Garbatella is my neighbourhood,” she writes in her best-selling memoir I Am Giorgia. “We are unique in the world precisely because of where we come from.”
Her family – Meloni, her sister and their mother – moved to Garbatella after their house in a more affluent area burned down. A 4-year-old Meloni caused the blaze by leaving a lit candle in front of her stuffed toy panda.
Before that trauma, her father walked out on the family, an act of abandonment that Meloni says gave her drive and stubbornness.
“All of it is a result of that wound,” she writes. “His lack of love is what scarred me. Which is exactly why, at the age of 11, I decided I never wanted to see him again.”
Galietti mischievously compares this origin legend to Bruce Wayne losing his parents before becoming Batman.
The memoir is shot through with guilt that she does not spend enough time with her own daughter, Ginevra, 9.
When Ginevra’s father, TV host Andrea Giambruno, was caught on a live microphone making lascivious comments about having a threesome with female colleagues in 2023, Meloni promptly ended the almost decade-long relationship.
Meloni was raised by her mother in Garbatella with her sister Arianna, her closest ally and a high-ranking party official, under the shadow of the Lazio regional government building.
Under the same shadow is a butcher’s shop and restaurant run by Daniele Squarcia, 38, and his brothers.
He said: “She would come here often and buy all sorts of meat: beef, chicken, steak. We might say to her, ‘here’s your package’ but she would never skip the queue of customers.
“She would always wait her turn. She had no airs and graces. People around here address her as ‘Giorgia’, not ‘prime minister’ or ‘the honourable’.”
Political posters and graffiti decorate Garbatella. Some stairs were painted in the colours of the Palestinian flag – a stance that is at odds with the area’s most famous daughter, who is staunchly pro-Israel.
Meloni used to paste posters as well, sneaking out late at night in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with leftist foes.
She has made no effort to smooth the rough edges of her distinctive Roman accent, which becomes particularly pronounced when she begins shouting in her rallies.
The exuberant 15-year-old found a new family when she joined the local youth section of the Italian Social Movement (MSI).
Luca Sanarese, 33, from Rome, was at Atreju with his wife and 5-year-old son.
He said: “We are not big fans of Meloni or Brothers of Italy, to be honest. I’m not happy with the Government. I haven’t seen any improvements to the economy since she came to power.”
Meloni named the fair after Atreju, the hero of The NeverEnding Story. In the book – later a 1984 film – the warrior Atreju fights against the Nothing, which threatens to engulf the land of Fantastica.
The reference to a warrior is intentional.
“In the end we all face the same inescapable question: did I change the system or did the system change me?” she wrote in I Am Giorgia.
Castel Sant’Angelo was built in 123AD as a crypt for the Emperor Hadrian. Meloni is determined to leave a lasting legacy, too.
Antonella Sberna, another of Meloni’s MEPs, said: “She has started to tackle a whole range of issues, from job creation and national security to the public debt – big issues that affect ordinary Italians’ lives on a daily basis.”
On the last day of Atreju, Meloni told her flag-waving supporters that they were a “beautiful answer” to those who said passion and sacrifice were useless and politics was just a “palace game”.
Smiling, she flexed her muscles and took a selfie in front of their massed ranks.
She is convinced her destiny is to go from strength to strength.
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