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On Sunday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni tweeted a picture [ [link removed] ] with President-elect Donald Trump, with the two sporting what looked like genuine smiles and giving thumbs up. It appears that the friendly relationship depicted in this picture may be a harbinger of things to come.
Trump and Meloni’s meeting in Paris—for the ceremony to rededicate the Notre Dame cathedral—was the first in-person meeting between the two leaders. I doubt it will be the last, because on style and substance, Meloni and Trump have much in common. After meeting Meloni, Trump noted [ [link removed] ], “She’s a real live wire, I will tell you. She’s great.” They are natural allies, and should they succeed [ [link removed] ] in forming a close working relationship, the U.S.-Italy bilateral relationship will be brought to new heights. Furthermore, a friendship with the Italian prime minister may aid in making the transatlantic alliance more personal for the incoming Trump administration. Meloni can be an important voice in explaining to the incoming U.S. president the value of having such strong allies in Europe while also arguing for the importance of staying engaged in pushing back against Russia’s imperial drive against Ukraine.
It is not a surprise that in diplomacy, human relationships matter. Certainly, U.S. presidents have at times put aside personal disdain for global leaders in service of national security or specific objectives. Consider one infamous quote [ [link removed] ] often attributed to Franklin Roosevelt regarding distasteful leaders who continued to be viewed as useful to the U.S. and thus worth working with: “he’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
And with allies, interpersonal relations between leaders may matter more. During the first Trump administration, despite the U.S.’s close alliance with Germany, the taint of the poor relationship between Trump and Chancellor Angela Merkel never went away. On the flip side, the personal chemistry between Reagan and Margaret Thatcher strengthened the U.S.-U.K. special relationship during their joint time in office, helping to smooth over those rare but intense disagreements like Grenada in 1983 [ [link removed] ].
President Trump is very much an instinctual leader; the way he gets on with or does not get on with world leaders is of outsized importance. In Meloni, he should find a kindred spirit. Both have faced a hostile media, judiciary and professional political class. They face many similar challenges: mass migration, high public debt (in Italy, it amounted to 135.8% of GDP in 2024 [ [link removed] ]) and a woke cultural wave from the left that informs the cultural and political battlelines on both sides of the Atlantic.
Italy and Meloni on the Ascendance
When Giorgia Meloni became prime minister of Italy in December 2022, she did so as a relative unknown outside of her country. Brothers of Italy (FdI), the conservative party she co-founded, had only been around for a decade prior to winning a commanding 26% of the vote in the general election that year. What’s more, FdI began as a small player in Italian politics, winning a mere 2% and 4.4% of the vote, respectively, in the 2013 and 2018 elections. The late former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) remained dominant on the right side of the political spectrum in 2013. Matteo Salvini’s Lega party inched out FI for the most seats on the center-right five years later.
But in 2022, Meloni burst onto the world stage, propelled by public concerns over endless waves of migrants washing up on Italian shores, a sclerotic economy and disillusionment with the nation’s relationship with the European Union. Furthermore, Lega’s diminished legitimacy after years in government with the populist Five Star Movement left open a door which FdI walked through.
As with Trump, Meloni was unfairly and lazily caricatured [ [link removed] ] as “far right” and “fascist” by some in the media, at least initially. Today, initial fears from the left have subsided, and Meloni has emerged as a force on the European stage. She now commands one of the most stable governments in Europe. And now, there is an opportunity for her to play a crucial role in building a bridge between the U.S. and Europe in the next four years.
Indeed, since Trump’s first term in office, much in Europe has changed, both in terms of geopolitics, but also in terms of leaders’ personalities. [ [link removed] ] In France, President Emmanuel Macron is severely wounded. The government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier collapsed last week after only three months, the first time since 1962 [ [link removed] ] that a French government has been felled by a no-confidence vote. The seeds of the French legislative morass were sown by Macron’s decision to call snap parliamentary elections earlier this year, which backfired badly against the French president.
In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz will need a minor miracle to stave off defeat in federal elections next September. In the U.K., a majority of Britons are unfavorable toward [ [link removed] ] new Prime Minister Keir Starmer. While he may not face an election until 2029, the nation seems likely to remain politically fractured in the meantime. In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez clung to power despite losing the 2023 elections. He held on via the barest of margins, only by promising [ [link removed] ] Basque and Catalan parties significant concessions.
In contrast, the Meloni government is extremely stable, a feat made more impressive [ [link removed] ] when you consider hers is the 68th government Italy has had in the past 78 years. The opposition on the Italian left, led by the Socialist Democratic party remains in disarray. FdI retains a commanding lead in the polls [ [link removed] ] despite a mixed bag of results from regional elections this fall.
A Shared Migration Conundrum
Like Trump, Prime Minister Meloni won office in no small part because of the issue of migration. Italy has for the past few years been the focal point of migration to Europe, with most migrants reaching European shores via the so-called central Mediterranean route. In 2023, the government’s first full year in office, Italy saw a 50% increase in migrant arrivals, leading to some criticism of the Meloni government. The prime minister in part blamed organized crime [ [link removed] ] for abusing the visa system; additionally, she has long warned that nongovernment organizations (NGOs) are fueling the migrant crisis and thus contributing to more suffering for those who elect to take the journey.
Since the 2023 surge, Italy has implemented a raft of measures to stem the tide of illegal migration. The government has imposed restrictions [ [link removed] ] on NGO “rescue” vessels patrolling near the North African coast, impounding those which violate the new regulations and at times detaining and fining crews. Some NGOs have turned to the Italian judiciary, which has at times overturned [ [link removed] ] detention orders but has left the government’s policies largely legally intact.
For the prime minister, Western NGOs operating just offshore of Libya are a pull factor encouraging migrants to cast off from their coasts in rickety contraption floats, knowing that they likely stand a decent chance of being taken on board a ship and brought to an Italian port. (At times, however, these gambles end up in tragedy: It’s estimated that over 3,000 migrants [ [link removed] ] drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in 2023.)
Similarly in the U.S., NGOs offer encouragement [ [link removed] ] for migrants to risk the perilous journey to the U.S. border. Encouraging desperate people to put themselves at the mercy of violent human smugglers is inhumane and fuels a crisis at the U.S. southern border which has shattered lives. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has even gone so far as to accuse [ [link removed] ] certain “charity” groups of smuggling migrants across the border. What is beyond question is that the U.S. migrant crisis has been a financial boon for some NGOs [ [link removed] ].
Beyond clamping down on NGOs, the Meloni government has implemented additional measures to stem the tide of illegal migration including changes to reunification visas, making it easier to deport people who overstay their visas and designating additional countries as safe to return for those migrants who have had asylum claims rejected. The centerpiece of Italy’s efforts to staunch illegal migration is the so-called Rome process, an effort to crack down on human smugglers while increasing opportunities for legal migration to Europe and making migration less attractive [ [link removed] ] through better economic opportunities in key countries of departure.
This initiative has attracted donors both from Europe and the Middle East. In September, U.K. Prime Minister Starmer pledged to contribute 4.75 million euros ($5 million); he praised Meloni’s efforts, saying, [ [link removed] ] “You’ve made remarkable progress working with countries along migration routes as equals, to address the drivers of migration at source and to tackle the gangs. As a result, irregular arrivals to Italy by sea are down 60% since 2022.” Indeed, after a rocky start, the Meloni government in 2024 greatly decreased the [ [link removed] ] number of migrant arrivals.
Last November, Italy and Albania signed a five-year agreement to house migrants rescued at sea by the Italian coast guard at reception centers [ [link removed] ] in Albania, where they will await decisions on their asylum claims. The centers could in theory process the claims of up to 3,000 migrants a month. [ [link removed] ] The plan, however, is now in peril after rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union and subsequent Italian courts found that [ [link removed] ] migrants must be transferred to Italy and cannot be held in Albania. The court rulings, which Meloni has harshly criticized, are a significant blow to the government’s plans.
Despite this setback, it is fair to say Europe is now by and large in the Meloni/Trump camp on migration. Nearly all leaders in Europe recognize the current situation is entirely unsustainable, and some governments, such as in the Netherlands, were voted in specifically to address the challenge of migration. Meloni’s efforts to engage on the issue drew plaudits from European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, who had praised Italy’s plan to open reception centers offshore [ [link removed] ]: “With the start of operations of the Italy-Albania protocol, we will also be able to draw lessons from this experience in practice.”
As in Italy, the scale of the migration challenge in the U.S. is immense. Both the U.S. and Italy have seen their systems overwhelmed, leaving the nations unable to properly assimilate new arrivals. Both countries’ populations are unhappy with the current state of affairs and desperate for leadership willing to listen to what the public is telling them on the migration issue.
Like PM Meloni, Donald Trump will undoubtedly be criticized in the mainstream media for his efforts to address four years of the Biden administration’s de facto open border policies. Judges will likely step in to stymie elements of Trump’s immigration policy via injunctions. However, the president wields extraordinary legal power on the issue of border security and immigration. Some exceptions notwithstanding, I anticipate the judiciary will likely defer to the White House on this issue when all is said and done.
Reasons for Optimism, Reasons for Caution
Beyond migration, Trump and Meloni are in basic agreement on many other policies. For instance, each is targeting significant government reforms—Meloni via constitutional reform [ [link removed] ] she is championing, and Trump via his planned Department of Government Efficiency.
Both leaders also received a mandate to fix their respective economies. While Italy’s projected 0.7% GDP growth this year is less than expected, it is certainly better than the shrinking German economy next door, which continues to shed jobs. In the U.S., a good deal of Trump’s big win in November can be chalked up to the public’s desire for the incoming president to combat inflation, which [ [link removed] ] has eaten into nearly every facet of life.
Furthermore, the prime minister and president-elect have each pushed back against progressivism in their own countries and in favor of more conservative social policies. Trump is drafting ways to weed out military leaders who have pushed progressive social agendas, which he believes has hampered recruitment and undermined the nation’s war-fighting ability. In Italy, the government has begun focusing on efforts to increase the nation’s paltry birthrate—efforts such as [ [link removed] ] the “payment of the social-security contributions of women who have two children or more,” which the prime minister believes is already having a positive impact. The Meloni government will be ramping up these efforts, turning greater attention to supporting young Italians having more children in 2025. At a demographic conference in April, Meloni stated [ [link removed] ], “In our view, the demographic challenge, the birth rate and economic sustainability, which is linked to these factors, are one of the most important challenges, quite simply because we do not want to settle for managing the present: There is no point managing the present if we do not also secure the future.”
Meloni’s influence in Europe has expanded beyond Italy on account of not only the rickety governments in Italy’s neighborhood, but also because of the performance of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (of which FdI is a part in the EU parliament) in the most recent EU elections. [ [link removed] ] Her successful installment of close ally Raffaele Fitto as executive vice president for cohesion and reforms—essentially a portfolio responsible for growth which controls the largest part of the EU’s 2025 budget [ [link removed] ]—is a testament to her new clout.
We have now firmly entered Meloni’s moment. The opportunity she has for building up a symbiotic relationship with the Trump administration will be further magnified should Friedrich Merz, with whom Meloni already enjoys a strong relationship, become the next German chancellor.
If there is an impediment to Meloni’s influence, it is the financial situation in her country. Italy is heavily reliant on the inflow of EU funds, which limits Meloni’s room to maneuver on the European stage. Indeed, [ [link removed] ] “Italy is due to receive 194.4 billion euros ($206.6 billion) in cheap loans and grants from the bloc’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) by 2026, more than any other state in absolute terms.” The nation’s budget squeeze also impacts its relationship with the U.S.; Italy will spend only 1.49% of GDP on defense in 2024, one of only a handful [ [link removed] ] of NATO member states not to be spending the benchmark of 2%.
On the issue of China and Russia, Meloni has already proven she can be a principled conservative and still recognize the existential threat posed by these two adversarial nations. On the war against Ukraine, Meloni has been clear that Russia is at fault. The stakes of the outcome of that war will have profound implications not only for European security, but for broader global stability. Earlier this year, Meloni noted [ [link removed] ], “It was inevitable that such a serious violation of international law, moreover at the hands of a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, would have cascading consequences on other areas of the world, from the Middle East to the Balkans, up to Africa.”
The prime minister has been firm in her support for Ukraine, despite more tepid support amongst some parties in her coalition, and in the face of an Italian public which is, according to polling, one of the least supportive of aid to Ukraine in Europe. Last week, Italy announced it would be sending a new aid package to [ [link removed] ] Ukraine, the 10th such package [ [link removed] ] since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Meloni won’t change her position on Ukraine; she has already risked much politically to take as firm a stance as she has. In September, she stated [ [link removed] ], “We must not give up on Ukraine ... I say that knowing clearly there is a public opinion that is frightened, worried—legitimately, rightly—about war.” President-elect Trump, on the other hand, has spoken about ending the war, though doing so is likely to be not so easy. Incoming National Security Adviser Mike Waltz recently noted, [ [link removed] ] “We need to bring this to a responsible end,” but added an important qualifier: “We need to restore deterrence, restore peace, and get ahead of this escalation ladder, rather than responding to it.” Meloni would no doubt agree, and her voice could help explain why doubling down on support for Ukraine rather than cutting it off is the way to get there. Speaking just after Trump’s reelection, both leaders [ [link removed] ] “expressed their willingness to work in close coordination on all major international issues, starting with the war in Ukraine.”
On China, Meloni has been similarly courageous. Her decision to withdraw Italy from China’s Belt and Road Initiative last December risked pushback from those within Italian political circles who were opposed, while also courting blowback from a Xi Jinping incensed at an embarrassing loss of face. The Trump administration is likely to view the transatlantic alliance through the lens of China. Italy, like the U.S. and other nations in Europe, has a complicated relationship with Beijing. The U.S. under Trump, however, may help push Italy toward a China policy more in line with that supported by Washington.
As President Trump returns to the White House next month, he will do so at a moment when Prime Minister Meloni’s star has clearly risen in Europe. For the health of the bilateral and broader transatlantic alliance, I hope it helps to guide the incoming Trump administration’s engagement overseas.

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