When she became Italy’s prime minister in October 2022, Giorgia Meloni looked like Brussels’ worst nightmare. Until then, the fiery leader of the Brothers of Italy – a party with neofascist roots – had seemed anything but EU-friendly. For years, railing against the bloc had been Meloni’s stock in trade. “Bring down this European Union!” she urged the 2019 conservative CPAC conference in the US.
