Less than a month after the elections, Italy has a new cabinet. Tonight President Mattarella asked Giorgia Meloni to form a government, which she accepted unreservedly as she had already filled her list of ministerial posts behind the scenes.

Tomorrow Meloni will be sworn in as the first female Prime Minister in Italian history. She is also the country’s first far-right prime minister since World War II.

It was not easy for Meloni when it was founded, as her right-wing coalition partners Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini negotiated hard to get as many ministries as possible for their parties. Still, it managed to deliver what it promised: a speedy formation and a government that can immediately take care of the many problems facing Italy.

Who is Giorgia Meloni? Check it out in this September video:

In a very succinct statement tonight, Meloni revealed her list of 24 ministers after speaking with the President. Apart from the head of government, the team is not a paragon of equality: only six of the 24 ministers are women.

Lega boss Matteo Salvini, who used to be interior minister and would have preferred to return to this post, has to be satisfied with the infrastructure ministry. Meloni had said from the start that she would rather be a technocrat than a politician in the Interior Ministry. This is not unusual in Italian politics. Salvini becomes Deputy Prime Minister.

The second deputy prime minister is former President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani, party colleague and close friend of Silvio Berlusconi. He becomes foreign minister. There were still doubts about this post in the media because Berlusconi himself had repeatedly made positive comments about Vladimir Putin in the past week and glossed over his role in the war in Ukraine.

Nevertheless, Meloni apparently still thinks Tajani is suitable. The 69-year-old politician is seen as pro-European, which will reassure Italy’s European allies.

Ministry of Birth

In terms of international cooperation, therefore, Meloni’s government will, as it has indicated, be staunchly pro-European and pro-NATO.

The conservative values ​​of the new squad are reflected in the new naming of the Ministry for Family and Equality. This will now become the Ministry for Family, Childbirth and Equal Opportunities and will be headed by Meloni’s party colleague Eugenia Roccella. She said in an August interview that “she’s a feminist, but that feminists have never considered abortion a right.”

Abortion was high on the agenda during the election period. The ultra-conservative Meloni has indicated she doesn’t want to reverse Italy’s abortion law, but does want to “give women the right not to have an abortion”.

She wants women who want to terminate their pregnancy for economic reasons to be able to receive financial support from the state. Feminist organizations are strongly opposed because they believe the government is making abortion so difficult.

Getting started

There is a lot of talk in the media about abortion and women’s rights, but that is not the priority of this government, Matteo Salvini said a few days ago on Facebook: “The Italian accounts have priority.” The government must start preparing the budget for 2023 immediately , which is also said to include measures to support Italians in the face of inflation and high energy prices.

A package of 55 reforms is also to be implemented by the end of this year as part of the European Corona recovery plan. If the government implements these reforms too late, Italy will lose almost 20 billion euros.

“Haughty, opinionated, arrogant and abusive”

Meloni is therefore very interested in her team of ministers taking on government tasks as one. But how stable this team is remains to be seen. Even during the founding process, the trust between Meloni and Berlusconi was damaged. Berlusconi wrote on a note that he found Meloni “haughty, domineering, arrogant and abusive”. Berlusconi’s recent statements about his friendship with Putin are also bad for the new prime minister.

Salvini had promised the Italians “five years of political stability” after the right-wing election victory, but given the strained relations, few harbor this illusion. The average lifespan of an Italian wardrobe is fourteen months.