Italy’s far-right leader Giorgia Meloni has officially accepted the task of forming the next government as the head of the country’s most right-wing administration since World War II.
He was welcomed by President Sergio Mattarella, less than a month after his Brotherhood of Italy party won elections.
Ms Meloni and her allies saw it first, declaring they were ready to govern “as soon as possible”.
Italy’s first female prime minister and her cabinet will be sworn in on Saturday.
She takes over from a very different leader in Mario Draghi who was brought in to run a country struggling to recover from the effects of the coronavirus and economic crisis.
Nato member Italy is the EU’s third-largest economy and Ms Meloni has sought to reassure her Western allies that her foreign policy will remain unchanged.
He made a short trip to the presidential palace in a white Fayette 500 before a private meeting with the president that lasted more than an hour. He then announced who would be in his cabinet.
His government will include Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and the far-right Forza Italia of Silvio Berlusconi – the 86-year-old former prime minister who has been at the center of a row over two leaked recordings for days. Who pointed it out. Pro-Putin views and shook the coalition.
After the leaders’ 11-minute meeting with President Mattarella on Friday morning, he said the new team was “ready to give Italy a government that faces the urgency and challenges of our time with awareness and competence”. . Former Rome mayor Virginia Raggi said that aside from politics, it was an important day: “We will be in charge of a woman for the first time in Italy.”
Only six of the 24 ministers in his government are women. Among them is the Minister of Families and Fertility, Eugenia Rukella, who has described abortion as “the dark side of motherhood”.
The new regional affairs minister, Roberto Calderoli, is famous for likening Italy’s first black minister to an orangutan.
Mr. Berlusconi, who is not in the cabinet, has nevertheless overshadowed its composition. The leaked audio of the pro-Putin remarks put pressure on Georgia Meloni, 45, who has long sought to emphasize her pro-Atlantic credentials.
In the first audio leak, he was heard saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin had sent him 20 bottles of vodka for his birthday and called him “number one of his five best friends”.
