Giorgia Meloni’s cabinet is due on September 4 to become the longest-serving Italian government since the Republic was founded in 1946, overtaking Silvio Berlusconi’s second administration, which lasted 1,412 days from June 2001 to April 2005.
Sworn in on October 22, 2022, her coalition will that day reach 1,413 consecutive days. She plans a rally in Bari, southern Italy, to mark it.
Italy has had 68 governments in 80 years, lasting on average about 14 months.
Only four cabinets before Meloni passed 1,000 days: Berlusconi II, Berlusconi IV (1,287 days), Bettino Craxi I and Matteo Renzi.
Berlusconi remains the longest-serving prime minister in total, with about nine years across four terms. Meloni is Italy’s first woman premier.
Since she took office France has had five prime ministers and Britain four.
Brothers of Italy MP Marco Osnato told AFP it was “a source of pride” for the government to be so stable.
When Brothers of Italy won the September 25, 2022 election, much of the European and American press treated the result as a rupture with liberal democracy.
The New York Times called the outcome a “seismic event”. Germany’s Stern put Meloni on its cover as “the most dangerous woman in Europe”. Le Parisien wrote of “Mussolini’s shadow”.
Democratic Party figures warned of isolation and bankruptcy: Enrico Letta said the right would take Italy “to bankruptcy”; Lorenzo Guerini spoke of a “risk of default”.
Commentators stressed her teenage membership of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement and labelled her heir to Mussolini.
Meloni called herself a conservative, condemned anti-Semitism and fascism as “absolute evil”, and took office pledged to NATO, Ukraine and EU budget rules.
The six-month collapse many predicted did not happen and the coalition with Matteo Salvini’s League and Forza Italia has held.
Markets did not flee, on the contrary.
The spread between Italian and German bonds, near 240 basis points around the 2022 campaign, has since narrowed to between 76 and 82 basis points in August 2026.
Unemployment has fallen below 6 per cent, to 5.1 per cent in April 2026 on Istat figures; the government says about 1.2 million extra people are in work.
The deficit narrowed to 3.1 per cent of GDP in 2025 from 3.4 per cent the year before, on Istat and Eurostat figures, with a primary surplus of 0.8 per cent.
Piazza Affari, Italy’s stock exchange, has risen, the FTSE MIB index more than doubling since late October 2022.
Meloni stayed inside the EU fiscal framework and remained a reliable partner on Ukraine. Italy nonetheless remains inside the EU excessive deficit procedure.
Though growth has been modest, with real GDP growing 0.5 per cent last year on Istat estimates, with similar numbers projected for this year.
Public debt, swollen by building tax credits granted before she took office, rose to 137.1 per cent of GDP in 2025 from 134.7 per cent, the second-highest ratio in the EU behind Greece.
On migration Meloni moved the debate, both in Rome and in Brussels.
Sea arrivals to Italy peaked at 157,651 in 2023 and then fell by more than half, holding near 66,000 in both 2024 and 2025 after Rome tightened deals with Tunisia and Libya and restricted NGO rescue ships that ministers said were acting as a pull factor. Interior ministry figures record 17,176 arrivals to August 10, 2026 against 37,952 in the same period of 2025, with returns up from 3,937 to 5,247.
Meloni’s other template was the Italy-Albania protocol: Italian-run centres in a third country to process and return people outside EU territory. Brussels later wrote that approach into EU law.
On June 17, 2026 the European Parliament approved a returns regulation allowing member states to open repatriation hubs in third countries, by 418 votes to 218.
It is the relationship with the US administration which has gone less well than anticipated, despite their ideological proximity.
On March 31, 2026, there was a clash between her and US President Donald Trump after a rift appeared over the war in Iran as Rome refused landing rights at the Sigonella naval air station in Sicily for US military aircraft bound for the Middle East. Palazzo Chigi said the refusal applied existing rules on American use of the base.
The inaugural CPAC Italy summit, due to open in Rome on September 4, might indicate reconciliation.
The right-wing Brothers of Italy leads the polls at between 25.4 and 28.1 per cent in late-August surveys, though Roberto Vannacci’s new outfit Futuro Nazionale (National Future) might cause some problems, as the firebrand ex-general is surging in the polls, possibly fracturing the Right, as the League, a right-wing coalition partner, has been bleeding in the same polls. Vannacci, an MEP elected for the League and its deputy leader before he split from it, stands at 7 to 8 per cent, above Forza Italia and the League itself.
This gives an incentive for all parties in the coalition to ride the term out until the regular parliamentary elections in 2027, sharpening the record, with Meloni aiming to remain Prime Minister after the elections.
Giorgia Meloni is facing a growing challenge from an unexpected direction: The American Right. https://t.co/gDfgEg0Y6T
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) June 23, 2026
