Europe | The tightrope walker

Giorgia Meloni would make Machiavelli proud

Italy’s prime minister is far more popular than Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni appears on the TV program Porta a Porta.
Photograph: Getty Images
|ROME

THE POLITICS of Italy have long been trapped in a cycle of rancid interaction between judges and prosecutors on the one hand and conservative politicians on the other. It dates from at least 1994, when the then prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was served with a subpoena while hosting a conference in Naples on organised crime. Berlusconi and his supporters claimed he was a victim of politically motivated jurists—and repeated that claim ad nauseam over the years that followed.

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This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The tightrope walker”

From the October 26th 2024 edition

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