Giorgia Meloni: Life in Italy is so far so good — but I remain cautious

Donald Trump and Italy prime minister Giorgia Meloni in Mar-a-Lago before the inauguration.
Donald Trump and Italy prime minister Giorgia Meloni in Mar-a-Lago before the inauguration. Governo.it photo

Friends in the United States are wild with anger, frustration, sadness, revulsion, fear, contempt, bitterness, confusion and some deep-seated emotions science hasn’t named yet. And this is after Donald Trump has been in office one week. 

Four more years of an unhinged president not worrying about reelection has them dusting off their passports and checking immigration laws around the world. Just as they did eight years ago, panicking friends and readers have written asking me how to move here to Italy. But this time, the question has a caveat.

What is life like under Giorgia Meloni?

Italy’s prime minister has always had an image problem and not because she’s a former DJ at the famed Rome nightclub, The Piper. Her Brothers of Italy party has neo fascist roots all the way back to Benito Mussolini, a vague link from which she has spent two years trying to distance herself. She is part of the far right movement that has swept across Europe and won election on an anti-immigration, pro-family platform.

Sound familiar?

Meloni and Trump

Then seeing her cozy up to Trump last week, when she was the only European leader to attend his inauguration, made some Americans wonder if I’ve found myself in Mar-a-Lago on the Mediterranean. 

Nope. In truth, life under Meloni has not been bad at all. She has been fairly benign. In fact, in many areas she has been good. She is the only conservative politician in the world who has slightly won over me, a lifelong liberal just to the left of Gandhi.

However, I remain cautious.

What did she and Trump discuss while dining at Mar-a-Lago before the inauguration? How could Trump leverage Italy – and affect my life – for his own needs? And what’s with her eerie, kinda creepy, relationship with Elon Musk? I know money can buy love. 

But can it buy Italy to spend more money on the military and less on healthcare?

We will see. Until then, Meloni is advancing a conservative agenda without alienating the majority of Italy, including me. She has become a model for conservative politicians unable to maintain a solid base. With right-wing governments faltering in Germany and France, Politico called her “Europe’s most powerful person in 2025.”

Meloni pluses

Here are some of her accomplishments:

  • Unemployment in Italy has dropped from 8.2 percent in 2022 to 7.5 in 2025.
  • Italy’s Gross National Product has increased 4.2 percent since 2019, the best of all of Europe’s G7 countries.
  • Exports of tech and auto products have increased.
  • She attracted foreign investors in industry.
  • Microsoft made a €4.3 billion ($4.8 billion) investment in Italy in October.
  • Amazon Web Services have committed to spend $1.2 billion here to expand the cloud infrastructure.
  • She worked with African governments to curb migration by increasing coastline patrols.
  • Scored points with millions of progressive Italian women when she kicked her newscaster boyfriend to the curb after his studio hot mike caught him blatantly hitting on women with pick up lines too vulgar even for this blog.
  • Her approval rating of 41 percent is considered good in Italy.

Even Trump said, “She’s really taken Europe by storm, and everyone else.” 

More than anything, as the New York Times wrote, she has made the Italian government “durable and stable.” It’s easier to make quicksand durable and stable. Her two-year reign is already longer than the 1.1-year average in a country that has had 69 governments since 1945.

Manfredi Valeriani in Pigneto.

An Italian political analyst’s view

“Indeed, her government has kept the economy stable which, for Italy, it might already be a success,” said Manfredi Valeriani, an adjunct professor and researcher in political risk analysis and foreign policy at Rome’s Luiss University.

I met Valeriani for coffee Friday in his neighborhood of Pigneto, Rome’s one-time drug den that in recent years has gentrified into a pseudo hip ‘hood with outdoor cafes and a young vibe. A Rome native, the 32-year-old Valeriani played Meloni down the middle. While not saying he was a supporter or critic, he did say she has definitely changed Italy’s international standing.

“It’s different from the past,” he said. “Italy so far is the most stable government (in Europe). That gives you a better position when you deal with other administrations and other governments internationally. It’s something Italy has often lacked.”

I told Valeriani that Meloni has also impressed me with what she hasn’t done. While Trump has dragged his conservative agenda to every corner of American society in only a week, Meloni became prime minister two years ago and has not:

  • Withdrawn support from Ukraine.
  • Withdrawn from NATO.
  • Withdrawn from the World Health Organization.
  • Withdrawn from the Paris Agreement.
  • Cut taxes for the rich.
  • Denied climate change.
  • Loosened gun laws.
  • Promised mass deportation of immigrants, including those born in Italy.
  • Degraded immigrants with name calling.

So where is the fascism? As one Rome-based journalist told me, “We’re all wondering if one day she’ll tear off her pantsuit and reveal jackboots and a beret.”

Meloni mistakes

From my viewpoint, her biggest misstep has been cutting €2.5 billion out of Citizens Income, a 2019 program aimed at assisting poor Italians who made less than €780 a month. She replaced it with two schemes, which reduced government spending but angered the left and unions, leading to protests and a demand of a minimum wage of €10 per hour. 

Her renowned anti-immigration stance has recently come under major fire. Last week her government expelled Osama Elmasry, a Libryan henchman whom the International Criminal Court wanted to stand trial on alleged charges of torture, rape, sexual violence, murder, imprisonment and persecution. Most pertained to migrants seeking passage from Libya to Italy. 

He was arrested Jan. 19 in Turin and returned to Libya last Tuesday for what interior minister Matteo Piantedosi said was, “urgent security reasons with my expulsion order, in view of the danger posed by the subject.”

She also set up immigrant detention centers in Albania where she wanted immigrants screened before coming to Italy, a costly and illegal venture.

“I’m not a lawyer but if they’re coming to Italy legally you can’t bring them somewhere else,” Valeriani said.

Shortly after she took office in 2022, she refused to let a boatload of 234 refugees enter Italy, saying Italy that year had already taken in 90,000 refugees. France had to rescue them. 

These stories surely warm Trump’s heart. It’s why he has made her a steady photo op, a cringe-worthy beauty and the beast moment. The picture of the pair in Mar-a-Lago, both flashing thumbs up to the camera, made me shiver, like I saw the Grim Reaper in my mirror.

Giorgia Meloni and Elon Musk are Whatsapp contacts. India Today photo

She is also Whatsapp buds with Musk who has visited Rome many times. She chose him to give her a Global Citizens Award in September in New York where Musk called her “someone who is even more beautiful inside than outside.”

Yeech! 

Trump’s influence

Am I being paranoid? Maybe. I keep reading that her elevated international stature may make her a possible bridge between Trump and the European Union with which he has threatened a trade war. 

Could he influence the most powerful person in Europe to hop on his bandwagon and pull support for Ukraine? She has admitted suffering from “Ukraine fatigue.” Withdraw from NATO? How about spending more on military and less on healthcare, which would affect me?

“It’s not worrying,” Valeriani said, “but it makes us wonder.”

Italy’s healthcare system, which the WHO has consistently ranked second in the world behind Switzerland, is operating at maximum capacity and has shown cracks in its armor.  She has urged people to enter healthcare’s private sector in which you don’t wait six months for surgery.

However, Meloni also had a similar close relationship with Pres. Biden. During his visit to Puglia for the G7 in June, he was late. When he arrived, a smiling Meloni cooed, “You don’t leave a woman waiting.”

It behooves any European country to have a healthy relationship with the U.S. president, regardless of who he is.

“I’m quite skeptical of big reveals in politics,” Valeriani said. “The idea that at a certain point she makes a sudden turn and she becomes the new dictator of Italy. It’s an extreme.

“I’m not 100 percent sure what Trump’s and Elon Musk’s position is going to be in the long run on Ukraine. I’m pretty sure, of course, Italy is going to move in accordance with the U.S. but I don’t think it’s going to get out of NATO just like I don’t think the United States is going to disengage very much from NATO.”

I can’t vote in Italy. If I did, I still don’t know if I’d vote for her. I won’t cheer her at public appearances. I won’t debate her critics. But as I tell friends and readers who ask about moving to Italy, I close my discussion with the same statement.

I’d rather be here than there.