ROME — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose rise to power in Rome two years ago sparked panic among the European political establishment, may now be the continent’s best hope to have one of its own in the good graces of the Trump White House.
Ms. Meloni, who turned 48 this week, boasts deeply conservative views and a political pedigree that have long made her a polarizing figure in her home country and beyond. But in President-elect Donald Trump, she seems to have found an enthusiastic advocate — and fan.
“I’m here with a fantastic woman,” Mr. Trump enthused during Ms. Meloni’s five-hour visit to Mar-a-Lago earlier this month. “She’s really taken Europe by storm.”
At first glance at least, Ms. Meloni’s brand of hard-edged conservatism makes her a natural ally for the once and future American president.
Her signature issue is a vociferous opposition to mass migration — a political hot-button issue in both Italy and the U.S. She opposes surrogacy and abortion rights and has used the courts to face off against political critics. Like Mr. Trump, she even has a thriving friendship with billionaire entrepreneur and X owner Elon Musk, who last year called Ms. Meloni “authentic, honest and thoughtful.”
The signs of a blossoming relationship are multiplying. Mr. Trump and Ms. Meloni were seen in extended conversation when both were in Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral in December, and the Italian prime minister is expected to be one of just a few world leaders who will personally attend Mr. Trump’s Monday inauguration in Washington.
According to Lucio Caracciolo, founder of the Italian global affairs magazine Limes, Ms. Meloni’s conservatism and steady government contrast favorably in Mr. Trump’s eyes with the centrism and political instability in other leading European powers, notably France, Germany and the U.K.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, like Mr. Trump a pugnacious conservative nationalist, has long boasted a personal and ideological link to the president-elect and many of his influential advisers. But Italy’s larger status and geopolitical weight compared to Hungary give Ms. Meloni the inside track over other rising European conservative figures to serve as the primary bridge between the U.S. and Europe.
“More than most other European leaders, Meloni understands that European Union countries have become provinces of the American Empire,” Mr. Caracciolo said in an interview. “She realizes it is a good idea to strengthen ties with the U.S., first, with [President Joe] Biden, and then with Trump, who is more of a natural fit for her.”
Ms. Meloni even shrugged off Mr. Trump’s recent comments about a possible U.S. annexation of Greenland, remarks that set off alarm bells in capitals across Europe. The Italian leader said Mr. Trump’s words were meant instead to send a “forceful message to other big global players rather than a hostile action.”
Differences
But there are some important policy differences standing in the way of stronger ties between Rome and Washington: Notably, unlike Mr. Trump, Ms. Meloni is a vocal supporter of Ukraine in that country’s war with Russia.
She has hosted Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on multiple visits and last year, as president of the Group of Seven countries, Ms. Meloni secured a $50 billion loan package for Ukraine backed by frozen Russia assets. In July, Rome will host the big, multilateral Ukraine Recovery Conference.
Ms. Meloni, Italy’s first female head of government, has also sought to strengthen the resilience of the European Union, and she has frequently criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another close personal and political ally of Mr. Trump, even as Italy maintains strong economic and political ties to Israel.
Additionally, if Mr. Trump makes good on threats to set up tariffs of up to 25% on imported goods, that would hit Italy particularly hard. The country is the European Union’s second largest exporter (after Germany) and the U.S. is the country’s largest non-European trading partner.
But the biggest obstacle may be defense spending, as Mr. Trump vows to resume his campaign to pressure other NATO powers to boost their anemic defense budgets.
During his first term in the White House, Mr. Trump criticized top alliance powers for spending too little on their militaries, even raising doubts about Washington’s commitment to the transatlantic alliance.
NATO guidelines say member states should spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense. When Mr. Trump took office in 2017, just six countries surpassed the 2% threshold. As of last year, 23 of them did — though Italy was one of the eight that still fell short, at 1.5 percent.
Italy says it will reach the 2-percent target by 2028, but last week Mr. Trump revealed he wants to boost the target to 5% of GDP, a level that no NATO member state meets. (U.S. defense spending was 3.4% of GDP last year under the Biden administration.)
’Obvious affinity’
Ms. Meloni, who also managed to forge a good working relationship with the departing Biden administration, has been diplomatic about her ties to the next American president. She told reporters that the Mar-a-Lago visit was “beyond expectations,” but shied away from suggesting she was seeking to be Mr. Trump’s point person and principal contact on the continent.
The conservatism of the two leaders creates “an added value, not only for Italy but for Europe as a whole,’’ she said, adding the Florida trip “was an opportunity to confirm a relationship that promises to be very solid.” But, she cautioned, “I don’t know if I can say ’privileged.’”
Still, ideology may trump policy differences, at least in the short term.
Defense spending “may not be as much of a problem because of the obvious affinity between Meloni and Trump,” Luigi Scazzieri, a research fellow at the Center for European Reform, said in an interview. “One viewpoint is that he won’t pick on her as badly as he would if Italy had a left-wing leader. But that is not a sure thing.”
Italy may find itself in a privileged position with Washington over the next four years simply because of the lack of an alternative.
“It’s clear that if Trump is looking for a person to call in Europe when in need, Meloni is the one,” Franco Pavoncello, political science professor and president of Rome’s John Cabot University, told the Associated Press this week. “Around her in Europe, it’s a desert.”
When Ms. Meloni took office in late 2022, it sent shivers across the European establishment. Her political party, the Brothers of Italy, is a direct descendant of Benito Mussolini’s World War II-era Fascists. And as a leader of the political opposition Ms. Meloni was a flamethrower, saying she wanted Italy to abandon the euro and calling for a massive naval blockade to prevent refugees from landing on Italy’s shores.
Ms. Meloni has tempered many of those views in office. She’s still unlikely to ever fully join the European establishment that may be counting on her and her ties to Mr. Trump. But that may not be as important as it would have been in the past, according to Mr. Caracciolo.
Mr. Trump’s return to power coincides with a scrambling of the traditional pecking order among European Union powers, with populist governments and political movements across the country challenging Brussels, while France and Germany face domestic political uncertainty.
“The notion of European solidarity is disappearing,” Mr. Caracciolo said. “The Paris-Berlin axis is no longer relevant; it’s been replaced with an everyone-for-himself reality. In that kind of situation, Meloni will be in a position to make her case at a time when Europe will need the U.S. more than it has in a long time.”