Europe | So far, so good

Giorgia Meloni has proved the doubters wrong

But Italy’s hard-right prime minister has troubles ahead

Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, at her official residence.
Image: Getty Images
|ROME

At the start of a year in which she will face her first real test of popular opinion at the European Parliament elections in June, Giorgia Meloni will be hoping for some cheer from growth figures out next week. She is unlikely to get any. The last reckoning showed the economy had grown by a bare 0.1% in the 12 months since Italy’s hard-right prime minister took office in October 2022. Nicola Nobile of Oxford Economics, a forecasting group, says quarter-on-quarter growth in the last three months of 2023 may even have turned negative.

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This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “So far, so good”

From the January 27th 2024 edition

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