Italy's Georgia Meloni gains favour with Donald Trump

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump once publicly stated, "I have a wonderful woman standing next to me who is really causing a storm in Europe." According to reports, he made these remarks to members at his private Mar-a-Lago golf club this month, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni standing beside him. Since Trump's election victory last November, Meloni is one of the few world leaders invited to visit Trump's headquarters, seen as a significant development as other European leaders vie for the attention of the incoming president.

Meloni has also established close ties with billionaire entrepreneur, Trump backer, and advisor, Elon Musk. Musk's SpaceX is in talks with Italy on a controversial $2.4 billion deal to use its satellite system to provide secure communications for the government. Musk has met with Meloni multiple times in Rome and praised her as "beautiful inside and out," a "sincere, honest, and thoughtful person" when he presented her with an award in the U.S. last year. Meloni, in turn, responded that Musk was "a precious genius."

In Europe, many analysts are dissecting how Meloni has established such close relationships with two of the world's most powerful figures and whether this will impact Italy or Europe during Trump's second term. Some suggest that, given Meloni's conservative background and the stability of the right-wing coalition she controls, she could become a strong ally for Trump in Europe. Meloni, 47, became Italy's first female Prime Minister two years ago and has emerged as a political force within the EU after her Brothers of Italy party performed strongly in last June’s European Parliament elections.

Meloni opposes mass migration and is against LGBTQI+, surrogacy, and abortion rights, and she has also filed defamation lawsuits in an attempt to suppress critics. Italy’s Minister for European and Regional Affairs, Tommaso Foti, said the Mar-a-Lago meeting showed that Italy could act as a “diplomatic bridge between the two worlds of the EU and the U.S.” Some commentators have even speculated that Meloni could become the EU’s “Trump whisperer.” However, analysts interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Rome said they did not think this was necessarily the case. Teresa Coratella from the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Rome office said Meloni was “one of the more visible Trump admirers in Europe.”

Coratella noted, "Even with a good relationship with the incoming U.S. president, even with the close ties between Meloni and Elon Musk, Italy will still have many problems with the new U.S. administration. Italy's current economic stability is very fragile, and we know that for Trump, economic relations will be an important part of his next term, particularly when it comes to tariffs, and Italy will be one of the most vulnerable countries in that respect." She also stated that Italy’s low spending on defense would also be a point of concern for the new president. Trump has been critical of European nations’ contributions to NATO and has said they should increase defense spending to 5% of GDP. According to NATO data from 2024, none of the security alliance’s 32 members currently spend anywhere near that level.

Coratella believes, “Italy will never be able to satisfy Trump’s new demands. If everything goes well, Italy may reach 1.6% next year, which is a far cry from what Trump expects from Europe.” Nathalie Tocci, Director of the Institute for International Affairs in Rome, said that given these issues, Meloni would likely prioritize her country’s interests rather than acting as the EU’s “Trump whisperer.” Professor Tocci told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, “I think it's very naive to assume that she's going to be whispering on behalf of the EU, she's going to be whispering on behalf of herself. At least on these two big issues, economic and defense, Trump is very unhappy with Italy, so she will use whatever leverage she has on a personal level to serve national interest because she's a nationalist leader.”

Professor Tocci also stated that if the EU needs a leader to act as a bridge to the White House during Trump's second term, there are complexities with other potential candidates. “It's very hard to see [French President] Emmanuel Macron really playing that role because he's been politically hugely weakened," she said. Macron’s decision to call a snap election last year resulted in a hung parliament and plunged France into its worst political crisis in a generation. Just three months later, the French Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, was ousted in a no-confidence vote after trying to force through a budget without parliamentary approval. In the same week, Macron rolled out the red carpet for the U.S. President-elect in Paris and held a meeting ahead of the grand reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral, seen by many as an attempt to protect his own rapidly collapsing credibility at home. Macron also arranged for himself, Trump, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet in Paris on the same day.

One of the President-elect’s strongest foreign allies is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who happens to hold the rotating EU presidency until the middle of this year. However, Orbán's close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin has angered other EU leaders due to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Poland will take over the EU presidency, potentially providing a platform for center-right Prime Minister Donald Tusk to liaise with Washington on behalf of the EU. "I think Poland, on the contrary, could play a role, particularly on the Ukrainian defense side," Professor Tocci said. "Because Poland is spending 4.7% of its GDP on defense this year, so Tusk can score quite a few points there, although the personal relationship between Trump and Tusk isn’t great. And then of course, there is the big question of Germany. What will happen after the elections?"

Germans will go to the polls on February 23. The conservative Friedrich Merz is the frontrunner to be the next Chancellor and has pledged to increase defense spending, but not to the level demanded by Trump, and Merz wants free trade negotiations when the President-elect talks about tariffs, also putting them at odds. The rise of the far right in German politics, also partly fueled by Trump’s close ally Musk, could also weaken Merz. The billionaire has been accused of trying to influence the campaign, repeatedly backing the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which is polling second. Musk has claimed that the AfD is “the only hope” for Germany and has increasingly inserted himself into broader European politics.

He has called for the resignation of UK Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and argued that only a populist right-wing party, Reform UK, led by Brexiteer figure Nigel Farage, can “save Britain.” In Italy, his company SpaceX is in talks with the government on a possible contract to use its Starlink technology to provide secure communications on sensitive matters between government and defense officials. This brings us back to Meloni. In her first major press conference of the year, the Italian Prime Minister confirmed her good relationship with Musk but said she had not personally spoken to him about the five-year, $2.4 billion communications deal. "I evaluate foreign investments through a single lens, that of national interest, not that of friendship or the political ideas of those who may invest," Meloni told reporters.

The potential deal has been heavily criticized by opposition parties, who question whether the handling of such communications should be entrusted to a Musk company. At the same press conference, the Italian Prime Minister also spoke about her working relationship with Trump. She confirmed she had been invited to the President-elect’s inauguration in Washington on January 20 and was keen to fit it into her schedule. She dismissed speculation that he would stop supporting Ukraine and try to force it to accept a disadvantageous deal to end its almost three-year-long war with Russia. “I don’t think the U.S. will abandon support for Ukraine,” Meloni said. “Trump has the ability to balance diplomacy and deterrence, and I predict that will be the case this time as well.” Meloni has been a strong supporter of Ukraine and met with President Zelenskyy in Rome this week, reaffirming her support.

At the press conference, she also tried to allay fears that the incoming U.S. President might try to seize the Panama Canal and Greenland through military or economic action, as he suggested last week. She added that President-elect Trump was simply stating that he would not allow key strategic interests near the U.S. to fall under the control of foreign rivals such as China. Meloni’s only criticism of the incoming U.S. leader was his promise to impose tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. globally, but she remained optimistic that a deal could be reached. “I don’t think tariffs are the right solution, but I am confident that a solution can be found through dialogue with our EU partners and the U.S.,” she said.

The Europe that Trump will encounter at the start of his second presidential term is very different from the one he saw during his first. While there has been much discussion about who he might align himself with in Europe, Coratella said he may ultimately decide not to favor any one leader. “President Trump may have a very fickle, very ad hoc attitude towards European leaders,” she said. “He may choose to talk to Meloni on certain specific issues, and then he may wake up and turn to Macron on other things, or to the next German Chancellor, or to Poland – it’s more of an à la carte relationship with European leaders.”

As European leaders struggle to work out how to deal with Trump 2.0, it is entirely possible that the President-elect himself has not given the issue as much thought as they have. “Is Trump still going to be interested in having any kind of constructive relationship with Europe? Or are we basically going to be left on the side when it comes to security and defense, and on the other side, we're going to have a trade war with the U.S.?" Professor Tocci said. "The wish on the European side is clearly that the U.S. continues to be engaged on security, and we want to have constructive relations on trade, but that requires two to tango, and there may soon not be a tango partner in Washington.”