Age, Biography, and Wiki
Giorgia Meloni was born on January 15, 1977, in Rome, Italy. She is a prominent figure in Italian politics, having served in the Chamber of Deputies since 2006. Meloni has spearheaded the Brothers of Italy party since 2014 and was the president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party from 2020 to 2025. Her leadership roles have earned her significant recognition, including being ranked as the third most powerful woman in the world by Forbes in 2024.
| Occupation | Prime Ministers |
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| Date of Birth | 15 January 1977 |
| Age | 48 Years |
| Birth Place | Rome, Italy |
| Horoscope | Capricorn |
| Country | Italy |
Height, Weight & Measurements
While specific details about her height and weight are not widely available, Meloni is known for her strong presence in the political arena.
On 25 October, Meloni gave her first official speech as Prime Minister in front of the Chamber of Deputies, before the confidence vote on her cabinet. During her speech, she stressed the weight of being the first woman to serve as head of the Italian government. She thanked several Italian women including Tina Anselmi, Samantha Cristoforetti, Grazia Deledda, Oriana Fallaci, Nilde Iotti, Rita Levi-Montalcini, and Maria Montessori, who she said, "with the boards of their own examples, built the ladder that today allows me to climb and break the heavy glass ceiling placed over our heads". The government won the confidence vote with a comfortable majority in both houses.
In July 2024, Meloni was awarded damages in a defamation lawsuit against journalist Giulia Cortese, who in October 2021 had posted a photo of Meloni on Twitter, now X, which was altered to show with Mussolini in the background. Cortese later mocked Meloni's height, stating, "You don't scare me, Giorgia Meloni. After all, you're only 1.2 metres (4 ft) tall. I can't even see you." Cortese was not charged for posting the photo comparing Meloni to Mussolini, but was fined for comments about Meloni's height that were deemed "body shaming". Cortese criticised the judgment in a post on X, stating, "Italy's government has a serious problem with freedom of expression and journalistic dissent."
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Dating & Relationship Status
Giorgia Meloni has been in a long-term relationship with Andrea Giambruno, a journalist. The couple has one daughter, Ginevra, born in 2016.
Her father, Francesco Meloni, was the son of Nino Meloni, a radio director from Sardinia, and the actress Zoe Incrocci from Lombardy. Meloni's mother, Anna Paratore, is from Sicily. Her father was a tax advisor and according to some political profiles had communist sympathies and voted for the Italian Communist Party, while her mother later became a novelist. Her father abandoned the family in 1978 when she was one year old, moving to the Canary Islands and remarrying. Meloni has four step-siblings from her father's second marriage. Seventeen years later, in 1995, he was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to nine years in a Spanish prison. He last contacted Meloni in 2006, when she became the vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies. Legal documents have revealed an alleged indirect economic link through a network of real estate companies in which the ex-wife Anna Paratore, mother of Giorgia Meloni, was a partner at various times.
Meloni was raised in the working-class district of Garbatella in Rome, moving there after the more affluent home she had first lived in as an infant with her parents was destroyed in a house fire a few years after her father left. Her upbringing has been described by her family as impoverished. In her autobiography, Meloni wrote that her childhood and her family's breakdown influenced her political outlook.
On 19 October 2019, she participated in the Italian Pride rally in Rome against the newly formed second Conte government. In her speech, she criticised the proposal to replace on the Italian identity cards of minors the wording father and mother with parent 1 and parent 2, concluding with the slogan "I am Giorgia. I'm a woman, I'm a mother, I'm Italian, I'm Christian". This slogan was remixed by two Milanese DJs, becoming a disco-trash catchphrase with millions of views, imitations, and memes on social media, even winning a gold disc. By her own admission in her autobiography, the media and viral success of the remixed music video, having lost the original satirical intention in favour of the LGBT community with which it had been created, greatly increased her popularity as a politician, who she said was suddenly transformed "from a boring politician into a curious pop phenomenon".
Meloni followed the PdL party line in favour of the 2011 military intervention in Libya; however, in 2019, she criticised the French rationale for the intervention, stating it was because of Muammar Gaddafi's opposition to the CFA franc. She was critical of Italian relations with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, stating that these countries "systematically and deliberately spread fundamentalist theories that are the main causes of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism". She opposed the decision to host the Supercoppa Italiana final in Saudi Arabia, and stated that Italy should actively raise the issue of human rights in Saudi Arabia. However, upon taking office, Meloni reversed her position, with her government stating it was "keen to maintain the excellent relationship with Saudi Arabia" yet still calling for a "firm reaction" against Qatar to which several Italians were accused of involvement in Qatargate.
Prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, she was in favour of better relations with Russia and supported lifting sanctions on the Russian Federation in 2014. In 2018, she congratulated Vladimir Putin for his re-election as president. In 2021, she wrote that Russia under Putin defends European values and Christian identity. She has since condemned the invasion and pledged to keep sending arms to Ukraine, and moved towards Atlanticism. In September 2022, she said that Russia's annexation of four partially occupied provinces in south-eastern Ukraine has "no legal and political value". She is supportive of NATO, although she maintains Eurosceptic views towards the EU, having also previously advocated a withdrawal from the eurozone. She rejects the Eurosceptic label, favouring the Eurorealism of a confederal Europe of sovereign nations. Following the start of Trump's second term, Meloni has been noted for her efforts to preserve the transatlantic alliance leveraging her relationship with Trump and credited for orchestrating a rapprochement between Trump and Ukrainian president Zelensky at the 2025 funeral of Pope Francis. A critic of China, Meloni is a supporter of closer ties between Italy and Taiwan. She is a controversial figure in Croatia due to her Italian irredentist statements in which she claimed Dalmatia and Istria, and for being opposed to Croatian entry into the EU due to the unresolved dispute concerning properties of exiled Italians after World War II from these two Croatian regions.
In 2015, Meloni began a relationship with Andrea Giambruno, a journalist working for Mediaset TV channels. The couple have a daughter born in 2016. On 20 October 2023, she announced her split with Giambruno, following his off-air statements transmitted by the television program Striscia la notizia that were described as "sexist" and "chauvinist", which included propositioning a female colleague for a threesome. Meloni added that "all those who hoped to weaken [her] by attacking [her] personal life should know that however much the drop of water tries to dig out the stone, the stone remains stone and the drop is only water". She defended herself not being married to her child's father.
Meloni is a Catholic and has used her religious identity in part to help build her national brand. In a 2019 speech to a rally in Rome, she said: "I am Giorgia. I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian."
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Net Worth and Salary
Meloni's net worth is estimated to be between €1 million and €2 million, reflecting her career in politics rather than business or investment. Her salary as Prime Minister is approximately £387,294 per year, though some sources estimate it at $522,785 annually. Her income has seen fluctuations over the years; in 2022, her total income was €293,531, and in previous years, it was lower, reflecting her roles before becoming Prime Minister.
Career, Business, and Investments
Giorgia Meloni's career is primarily in politics, with no significant business investments reported. She has been a member of the Chamber of Deputies since 2006 and has led the Brothers of Italy party since 2014. Her political career has been marked by her leadership of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party and her current role as Italy's Prime Minister.
In 1998, after winning the primary election, Meloni was elected as a councillor of the province of Rome, holding this position until 2002. She was elected national director in 2000 and became the first woman president of Youth Action, the AN youth wing, in 2004. During these years, she worked as a nanny, waitress, and bartender at the Piper Club, one of the most famous nightclubs in Rome.
Meloni graduated from Istituto tecnico professionale di Stato Amerigo Vespucci in 1996. After her election to the Italian Parliament in 2006, she declared in her curriculum vitae that she obtained a high school diploma in languages with the final mark of 60/60, and "Diploma di liceo linguistico; giornalista". This created some controversy, as Istituto tecnico professionale di Stato Amerigo Vespucci was not a foreign language high school and was not qualified to issue any diploma in languages; instead, it was a Hospitality Institute (see istituto tecnico) specialised in issuing professional diplomas for job titles such as chef, waiter, entertainer, tour guide, hostess, depending on the course of studies chosen by the student. It is unknown what course of studies Meloni selected at Istituto tecnico professionale di Stato Amerigo Vespucci. Meloni mentioned that the Hospitality Institute she attended became the Centro di Formazione Professionale Ernesto Nathan issuing diplomas in foreign languages. However, training centers are not allowed to issue diplomas. The Centro di Formazione Professionale Ernesto Nathan issues qualifications for beauticians and hairdressers.
In 2008, at 31 years old, she was appointed Minister for Youth Policies in the fourth Berlusconi government, a position she held until 16 November 2011, when Berlusconi was forced to resign as the prime minister amid a financial crisis and public protests. She was the second youngest-ever minister in the history of united Italy. In August 2008, she invited Italian athletes to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games in disagreement with the Chinese policy implemented towards Tibet; this statement was criticised by Berlusconi, as well as the foreign affairs minister Franco Frattini. In 2009, her party merged with Forza Italia (FI) into The People of Freedom (PdL) and she took over the presidency of the united party's youth section, called Young Italy. In the same year, she voted in favour of a decree law against euthanasia.
In December 2012, Meloni, La Russa, and Crosetto founded a new political movement, Brothers of Italy (FdI), whose name comes from the words of the Italian national anthem. In the 2013 Italian general election, she stood as part of Berlusconi's centre-right coalition and received 2.0% of the vote and 9 seats. She was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Lombardy and was later appointed the party's leader in the house, a position that she would hold until 2014, when she resigned to dedicate herself to the party. She was succeeded by Fabio Rampelli.
In a record-low voter turnout election, exit polls projected that the centre-right coalition would win a majority of seats in the 2022 general election. Meloni was projected to be the winner of the election with FdI receiving a plurality of seats, and per agreement with the centre-right coalition, which held that the largest party in the coalition would nominate the next prime minister, she was the frontrunner and would become the country's first female prime minister. The PD, head of the centre-left coalition, conceded defeat shortly after the exit polls, and Hungary's Orbán, Poland's Mateusz Morawiecki, United Kingdom's Liz Truss, and Marine Le Pen, former leader of National Rally (RN) in France, congratulated Meloni. European radical right parties and leaders, such as Alternative for Germany and Vox, also celebrated Meloni's results. After many years of absence from politics, Gianfranco Fini, former leader of the MSI and AN during the early years of Meloni's political career, expressed satisfaction for her victory, said he had voted for her party, and described her as an anti-fascist, despite her rejection of the label, which she considers to be political.
Observers have debated how right-wing a Meloni-led government would be, and which label and position on the political spectrum would be more accurate or realistic. Many variously described it as Italy's first far-right-led government since World War II, and Meloni as the first far-right leader since Benito Mussolini, and some academics also described it as the most right-wing government since 1945. Many questioned its direction, citing Berlusconi's and Salvini's Russian ties, in contrast to Meloni's Atlanticism. Others, such as Sky News, while citing Meloni's and her party's neo-fascist roots, disagreed with the far-right label and said: "Giorgia Meloni is not a fascist." Steve Sedwick of CNBC summarised the discussion, saying: "Have we got a centre-right coalition, have we got a right coalition, have we got a far-right coalition, or have we got a fascist coalition? I have seen all four printed, depending on who you read."
Meloni complained about the danger of ethnic substitution also in her 2019 book on the Nigerian mafia, co-written with, anti-vaccine psychiatrist, founder of the "Anti-Islamisation Party" and at the time primate of a schismatic Italian Orthodox Church. Along with other white supremacist stereotypes, the book argues that a project is underway to "change the European ethnicity and create Eurafrica", that the Nigerian mafia is the product of "local cultures that practice ritual murder and cannibalism", and that "the corpses of white people are very appreciated" by the Yoruba, who are said to be engaged in the trade of human flesh and organs. In 2023, amidst an unprecedented migration crisis, she asserted that Europe and Italy need immigration and that only illegal immigration must be fought in favour of legal immigration. Meloni wanted to make a deal with Tunisian president Kais Saied with a focus on stopping illegal immigration from Tunisia to Europe. In September 2023, more than 120 boats carrying around 7,000 migrants from Africa arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa within 24 hours, increasing the volume handled by the local migration reception center by 15 times and leading to the migrants outnumbering the island's native population. Meloni declared that she wrote to the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen "to ask her to come with me to Lampedusa to personally realize the gravity of the situation we face, and to immediately accelerate the implementation of the agreement with Tunisia by transferring the agreed resources".
In November 2018, Meloni declared that the celebration of the Liberation Day, also known as the Anniversary of Italy's Liberation from Nazi-Fascism on 25 April, and Festa della Repubblica, which celebrates the birth of the Italian Republic on 2 June, should be substituted with the National Unity and Armed Forces Day on 4 November, which commemorates Italy's victory in World War I. She said that Liberation Day and Festa della Repubblica are "two controversial celebrations". Meloni has tried to distance herself from her ties to Roberto Jonghi Lavarini, a Milanese politician and entrepreneur known as the "Black Baron".
After the formation of FdI in 2012, she decided to add the tricolour flame to the party flag, a neo-fascist symbol associated with the MSI, which derived its name and ideals from the RSI. The tricolour flame is said to represent Mussolini's remains, where a flame is always burning on his tomb in Predappio. Heading into the 2022 general election, Segre told Pagine Ebraiche that Meloni should remove the tricolour flame from the party's logo. FdI's co-founder Ignazio La Russa rejected this view, and Meloni ignored the request, keeping the tricolour flame.
Social Network
While Meloni is active on various social media platforms, her focus is primarily on political engagement rather than personal or business networking.
In 1992 Meloni joined the Youth Front, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist political party founded in 1946 by followers of Italian fascism. She later became the national leader of Student Action, the student movement of the National Alliance (AN), a post-fascist party that became the MSI's legal successor in 1995 and moved towards national conservatism. She was a councillor of the province of Rome from 1998 to 2002, after which she became the president of Youth Action, the youth wing of AN. In 2008 she was appointed Minister for Youth Policies in the fourth Berlusconi government, a role which she held until 2011. In 2012 she co-founded FdI, a legal successor to AN, and became its president in 2014. She unsuccessfully ran in the 2014 European Parliament election and the 2016 Rome municipal election. After the 2018 general election she led FdI in opposition during the entire 18th legislature. FdI grew its popularity in opinion polls, particularly during the management of the COVID-19 pandemic by the Draghi Cabinet, a national unity government to which FdI was the only opposition party. Following the fall of the Draghi government, FdI won the 2022 general election.
In 1992, at 15 years of age, Meloni joined the Youth Front, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist political party that dissolved in 1995. During this time, she founded the student coordination Gli Antenati ('The Ancestors'), which took part in the protest against the public education reform promoted by minister Rosa Russo Iervolino. In 1996, she became the national leader of Student Action, the student movement of the post-fascist National Alliance (AN), the national-conservative heir of the MSI, representing this movement in the Student Associations Forum established by the Italian Ministry of Education.
On 19 January 2025, the Libyan general Osama Elmasry Njeem, better known as Almasri, was arrested after the Juventus–Milan match near the Juventus Stadium, in Turin, and transported to the Vallette prison. Almasri was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of The Hague for war crimes. Subsequently, the court of appeal of Rome ordered his release on 21 January due to the irregularity of the arrest, which resulted from the lack of approval from the Ministry of Justice. After his release, the Libyan military officer was expelled and repatriated to Libya aboard a Falcon 900 aircraft of the Italian intelligence services. On 27 January, following a report filed with the Rome prosecutor's office by lawyer Luigi Li Gotti, the Tribunal of Ministers was involved to assess whether Prime Minister Meloni, Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi, Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio, and Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers Alfredo Mantovano should be investigated for aiding and abetting and embezzlement. In a video posted on social media, Meloni said: "Curiously, the [ICC] did so just when this person was about to enter Italian territory, after he had peacefully stayed in three other European states for twelve days." According to writer and journalist Roberto Saviano, the repatriation affair would have been completely buried without the intervention of some Italian media outlets focused on immigration and the Libyan mafia's control over illegal immigration, who were the first to report the news.
Meloni opposes abortion, euthanasia, and laws that recognise same-sex marriage, and describes herself as "pro-family". She has said she "wouldn't change" the abortion law in Italy but wanted to apply more fully the part of the law "about prevention", such as permitting doctors to refuse to carry them out (conscientious objection to abortion). She also stated that the recognition of same-sex unions in Italy is good enough, and she said it was something she would not change; in 2016, while she said she would respect the law if elected mayor of Rome, she had supported a referendum to abrogate the civil union law. At a rally at the Piazza del Popolo in October 2019, she spoke against same-sex parenting; her speech became viral on Italian social media platforms. During a February 2016 interview to Le Iene, an Italian television show, she had also said that she would "rather not have a gay child".
Meloni has opposed the 1993 Mancino law, a hate speech law. She is opposed to the DDL Zan, an anti-homophobia law that would expand the Mancino law to cover LGBT discrimination, declaring in 2020 that "there is no homophobia" in Italy. She is also opposed to surrogacy, which is pejoratively known in Italian as utero in affitto ('uterus renting'), and she has pushed in Parliament for a law to make it a "universal crime"; her efforts have been endorsed by the Catholic Church and by Pope Francis himself. Meloni is supportive of the anti-gender movement, based on Catholic theology in the 1990s that condemns gender studies, and she is sceptical of what she calls "gender ideology"; she says it is being taught in schools, and that it attacks female identity and motherhood. She is supportive of changing the Constitution of Italy to make it illegal for same-sex couples to adopt children. In March 2018, she criticised The Walt Disney Company for the decision to represent a gay couple in the musical fantasy film Frozen II. On Facebook, she wrote: "Enough! We are sick of it! Take your hands off the children."
Amid the 2022 escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Meloni said she supported giving refugee status to those coming from a war-shaken country but not to other asylum seekers. She said: "It's time to call things by their name, to give refugee status to those fleeing war, women, and children, perhaps doing the opposite with those who aren't refugees." In August 2022, she reposted a pixelated video on Twitter that shows a woman being raped by an asylum seeker. The victim of the violence decried the publication of the video and said she was recognised by the video posted. After receiving backlash, Meloni defended herself by accusing other politicians of not having condemned the rape itself.
During her political career, Meloni has expressed statements that generated controversy. In an interview to the French newscast Soir 3 when she was 19, she praised Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as "a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy", and as the best politician of the last 50 years. In January 2020, there was some controversy after Meloni and the comune ('municipality') of Verona supported naming a street after Giorgio Almirante; Meloni and the comune also supported giving Liliana Segre, a Holocaust survivor and senator for life, honorary citizenship. Segre said that she and Almirante are incompatible and the comune had to make a choice. In May 2020, Meloni praised Almirante as a "great politician", as well as "a patriot". He was the co-founder of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), who had a long post-war political career until retiring in 1987. During World War II, he was a wartime collaborator as a civil minister of the Italian Social Republic (RSI), a Nazi puppet state, as well as editor-in-chief of the antisemitic and racist magazine La Difesa della Razza, which published the "Manifesto of Race" in 1938. As a minister in 2009, Meloni visited Yad Vashem in Israel, and she has also said as FdI party leader that her party "handed fascism over to history for decades now" and it "unambiguously condemns the suppression of democracy and the ignominious anti-Jewish laws".
Meloni is a fan of fantasy, particularly J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. As a youth activist with the Italian Social Movement (MSI), she attended the 1993 revival of the Camp Hobbit festival ("Hobbit 93") and sang along with the folk band Compagnia dell'Anello, named after The Fellowship of the Ring (1954). Later, she named her political conference Atreyu, after the hero of the novel The Neverending Story (1979). Meloni told The New York Times: "I think that Tolkien could say better than we can what conservatives believe in." In November 2023, Meloni inaugurated a major exhibition on J. R. R. Tolkien at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome to mark the 50th anniversary of the author's death. Apart from Tolkien, she is fond of British conservative philosopher Roger Scruton and has said: "If I were British I would be a Tory."
Education
Meloni's educational background is not extensively detailed in available sources, but she has been involved in political activities since her youth, rising through the ranks of Italian politics.
Giorgia Meloni's journey to becoming one of the most influential figures in European politics is a testament to her dedication and leadership in the political arena. Her net worth and earnings reflect her career in public service rather than in business or investments.
In February 2021, she joined the Aspen Institute, an international think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., which includes many financiers, businessmen, and politicians, such as Giulio Tremonti. On 19 February 2021, the University of Siena professor Giovanni Gozzini insulted Meloni calling her vulgar names from a radio; both the President Sergio Mattarella and the Prime Minister Mario Draghi phoned Meloni and stigmatised Gozzini, who was suspended by the board of his university.
Meloni has criticised Italy's approach towards illegal immigrants, calling for a zero-tolerance policy. She wants to blockade illegal immigrants from reaching Italian ports, and boost the birth rate of Italian nationals to ease the need for migrant labour. She is opposed to birthright citizenship proposals, which would give citizenship including education rights to foreigners born and living in Italy.
Forbes ranked Meloni as the seventh most powerful woman in the world in 2022 and placed her third in 2023 and 2024. In 2024 she was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. That same year, Meloni also received the Atlantic Council's Global Citizen Award. Politico Europe ranked her as Europe's Most Powerful Person in their Class of 2025.
