Giorgia Meloni brought a small party, created after a controversial exit from the People of Freedom Party in 2012, from 2% to 25% support in only a few years. She now leads the center-right coalition, for which polls showed a clear advantage ahead of victory in the 2022 elections. She is backed by loyal, prepared, and professional people. Many have accused the prime minister—whose own competence has never been questioned even by her detractors and opponents—of surrounding herself with an ineffective team that is not up to the task. However, these claims have little or nothing to do with reality, as these first 12 months of government are demonstrating.
A strong team
Giorgia Meloni certainly has a very strong personality and it cannot be easy to maintain her frenetic work pace and obsessive precision. Over the years, very few men have been able fully to gain her trust in their respective roles. In her autobiographical work, Io sono Giorgia (which topped the book sales charts in Italy for weeks), she outlined with painstaking precision the qualities of her most trusted collaborators. One of the most important figures in the party is Giovanbattista Fazzolari.
Born in 1972, Fazzolari (known as “Spugna” because he absorbs everything) is one of Meloni’s most trusted advisors. Responsible for the party programme, he is rumored to be behind Meloni’s main decisions. She once described him as one of the “smartest people I’ve ever had the fortune of knowing.” The son of a diplomat, he joined the Youth Front at 17, heads the party’s research office, and is designated by some as the ideologue of the party, even though he often scoffs at such claims. Meloni has Fazzolari at her side for every important decision. He is a sort of gray eminence within the Meloni government. Every important dossier invariably passes through him, and it is from him that the prime minister seeks counsel before taking on an important initiative.
Raffaele Fitto takes on the delicate role of European affairs with responsibility for the very important PNRR plan—an economic recovery and development program. Fitto has extensive experience in the European Parliament, where he helped establish a group of European conservatives, and where he still has very close ties with the commission. His courageous and never-ending work in recent months on the country’s resilience plan is finally starting to achieve its first important results. At 53 years old, this former president of Puglia, a former Christian Democrat, entered politics at a very young age, immediately demonstrating his character, will, competence, and dedication. Skilled in creating contacts and weaving alliances and agreements, he is considered capable of working with even the most rebellious European leaders.
As co-president of the ECR group at the European Parliament, the prime minister wanted Nicola Procaccini, one of the most brilliant minds in foreign policy within the party. His political activity during his university years was divided between the university organization of AN, Azione Universitaria, and his election—at just 21 years old—as municipal councilor of Terracina (1997-2001), where he sat on the opposition benches. He worked as spokesman for Giorgia Meloni when she was minister of youth in the Berlusconi government. As an MEP, he fights for a more gradual and less ideological green deal, and managed to obtain important results on delicate issues such as green homes, electric motors, and the packaging and waste directive. Alongside Procaccini sits Carlo Fidanza, head of delegation of the FDI group in the European Parliament, and another of the men closest to the prime minister.
The origins
Giorgia Meloni began her rise in the party and in politics at the Viterbo youth meeting in 2004. It was in that meeting that a very close bond was formed with the men to whom she is linked, like Giovanni Donzelli, the national manager of Meloni’s party.
If Fazzolari is the brains of the party, then the group leader in the chamber, Francesco Lollobrigida, is the arm. Married to Meloni’s sister and president of the Rome Youth front until 1995, Lollobrigida was a provincial councillor with Giorgia Meloni. With her, he founded Fratelli d’Italia in 2012. He is agriculture minister of the Meloni government, a skilled organizer who, together with Fazzolari, was among the creators of the so-called turning point in Viterbo
Another clear mind among the loyalists is that of Adolfo Urso, of long service in the National Alliance, and among the founders of the project with secretary Gianfranco Fini. A relationship builder and a deputy minister under the Berlusconi government, he now leads an important department where he has played a fundamental role in combating high utility bills. He is president of the Fare Futuro Foundation, which organizes conferences and high-level events on foreign policy and geopolitics. At the helm of two important regions there are two men whom the prime minister implicitly trusts: Riccardo Marsilio and Francesco Acquaroli, the presidents of the regions of Abruzzo and Marche, respectively. Supported by her team of loyal and trustworthy advisors, Giorgia Meloni has enjoyed much success. Perhaps it is the depth of this support that leads to her frequent quotation of a famous passage from The Lord of the Rings: “Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”
Giorgia Meloni’s Team of Loyalists
Giorgia Meloni brought a small party, created after a controversial exit from the People of Freedom Party in 2012, from 2% to 25% support in only a few years. She now leads the center-right coalition, for which polls showed a clear advantage ahead of victory in the 2022 elections. She is backed by loyal, prepared, and professional people. Many have accused the prime minister—whose own competence has never been questioned even by her detractors and opponents—of surrounding herself with an ineffective team that is not up to the task. However, these claims have little or nothing to do with reality, as these first 12 months of government are demonstrating.
A strong team
Giorgia Meloni certainly has a very strong personality and it cannot be easy to maintain her frenetic work pace and obsessive precision. Over the years, very few men have been able fully to gain her trust in their respective roles. In her autobiographical work, Io sono Giorgia (which topped the book sales charts in Italy for weeks), she outlined with painstaking precision the qualities of her most trusted collaborators. One of the most important figures in the party is Giovanbattista Fazzolari.
Born in 1972, Fazzolari (known as “Spugna” because he absorbs everything) is one of Meloni’s most trusted advisors. Responsible for the party programme, he is rumored to be behind Meloni’s main decisions. She once described him as one of the “smartest people I’ve ever had the fortune of knowing.” The son of a diplomat, he joined the Youth Front at 17, heads the party’s research office, and is designated by some as the ideologue of the party, even though he often scoffs at such claims. Meloni has Fazzolari at her side for every important decision. He is a sort of gray eminence within the Meloni government. Every important dossier invariably passes through him, and it is from him that the prime minister seeks counsel before taking on an important initiative.
Raffaele Fitto takes on the delicate role of European affairs with responsibility for the very important PNRR plan—an economic recovery and development program. Fitto has extensive experience in the European Parliament, where he helped establish a group of European conservatives, and where he still has very close ties with the commission. His courageous and never-ending work in recent months on the country’s resilience plan is finally starting to achieve its first important results. At 53 years old, this former president of Puglia, a former Christian Democrat, entered politics at a very young age, immediately demonstrating his character, will, competence, and dedication. Skilled in creating contacts and weaving alliances and agreements, he is considered capable of working with even the most rebellious European leaders.
As co-president of the ECR group at the European Parliament, the prime minister wanted Nicola Procaccini, one of the most brilliant minds in foreign policy within the party. His political activity during his university years was divided between the university organization of AN, Azione Universitaria, and his election—at just 21 years old—as municipal councilor of Terracina (1997-2001), where he sat on the opposition benches. He worked as spokesman for Giorgia Meloni when she was minister of youth in the Berlusconi government. As an MEP, he fights for a more gradual and less ideological green deal, and managed to obtain important results on delicate issues such as green homes, electric motors, and the packaging and waste directive. Alongside Procaccini sits Carlo Fidanza, head of delegation of the FDI group in the European Parliament, and another of the men closest to the prime minister.
The origins
Giorgia Meloni began her rise in the party and in politics at the Viterbo youth meeting in 2004. It was in that meeting that a very close bond was formed with the men to whom she is linked, like Giovanni Donzelli, the national manager of Meloni’s party.
If Fazzolari is the brains of the party, then the group leader in the chamber, Francesco Lollobrigida, is the arm. Married to Meloni’s sister and president of the Rome Youth front until 1995, Lollobrigida was a provincial councillor with Giorgia Meloni. With her, he founded Fratelli d’Italia in 2012. He is agriculture minister of the Meloni government, a skilled organizer who, together with Fazzolari, was among the creators of the so-called turning point in Viterbo
Another clear mind among the loyalists is that of Adolfo Urso, of long service in the National Alliance, and among the founders of the project with secretary Gianfranco Fini. A relationship builder and a deputy minister under the Berlusconi government, he now leads an important department where he has played a fundamental role in combating high utility bills. He is president of the Fare Futuro Foundation, which organizes conferences and high-level events on foreign policy and geopolitics. At the helm of two important regions there are two men whom the prime minister implicitly trusts: Riccardo Marsilio and Francesco Acquaroli, the presidents of the regions of Abruzzo and Marche, respectively. Supported by her team of loyal and trustworthy advisors, Giorgia Meloni has enjoyed much success. Perhaps it is the depth of this support that leads to her frequent quotation of a famous passage from The Lord of the Rings: “Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”
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