ROME The new cabinet of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni took office on Saturday. Her cabinet consisted of 24 ministers. Here are some of the significant figures’ profiles:
FINANCE MINISTER
Giancarlo Giorgetti, 55, is a seasoned political wheeler-dealer who is seen by his right-wing League party as being moderate and generally pro-European.
While serving as industry minister in Mario Draghi’s departing administration, Giorgetti assisted in thwarting several Chinese takeover attempts in crucial sectors of the Italian economy.
Prior to that, he spent most of his 26 years in parliament working behind the scenes, settling disputes on behalf of others and developing important relationships in the financial and corporate worlds.
Giorgetti understood every aspect of Rome’s legislative procedures during his ten years as the leader of the lower house budget committee from 2001 to 2013. He is known for his ability to connect people in politics, industry, and the influential Roman Catholic Church of Italy
Prime Minister Meloni did not initially favour him for the position.
She reportedly sought board member of the European Central Bank’s Fabio Panetta about the position since she wanted a technocrat, but he declined. Later, she turned to face Giorgetti.
FOREIGN MINISTER AND DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER
One of Silvio Berlusconi’s closest advisers, Antonio Tajani, 69, is a dependable man with good EU credentials. Since 2018, he has served as deputy head of Berlusconi’s conservative Forza Italia party.
Tajani was a journalist before he went into politics with Berlusconi in 1994. He has spent most of his time in politics in Brussels, either working for the European Commission or the European Parliament.
From 2017 until 2019, he served as the EU’s speaker. He handled the industry (2010-2014) and transportation (2008-2010) positions at the Commission. Tajani backed a right-wing, pro-monarchy party when he was younger. He is fluent in Italian, French, Spanish, and English.
BUDGET MINISTER
Matteo Piantedosi, a 59-year-old civil servant, helped League leader Matteo Salvini come up with his tough policies against illegal immigration when he was chief of staff for the interior ministry from 2018 to 2019.
Piantedosi is a technocrat without a party affiliation and no experience as a minister, despite his friendship with Salvini. He has served as Rome’s prefect for the past two years, a post that defends security and law and order in the city.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure
Matteo Salvini, 49, is the leader of the hard-right League Party and a former interior minister. He has pushed for a populist agenda that includes sending back a lot of boat migrants, cutting taxes, and lowering the age at which people can retire.
When the League was a small, scandal-riddled provincial party in 2013, the bearded and stocky Salvini assumed leadership. Before a series of mistakes in the last three years caused his popularity to drop, he turned it into a national force that looked like it was going to take over Italian politics.
Salvini, a former ardent supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has denied that Moscow was funding his party and has condemned the invasion of Ukraine.Even though the League didn’t do very well in the election on September 25, he refused to step down as leader.
Minister of Industry
Adolfo Urso, who is 65 years old and a member of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, started his political career with the Italian Social Movement (MSI), which was founded in 1946 by people who liked Mussolini.
Urso, a former journalist, won his first election to the legislature in 1994. He worked in Berlusconi’s center-right cabinet and was most recently in charge of the powerful intelligence committee in parliament.
In this role, he pushed Mario Draghi’s government and parliament to tighten “golden powers” that protect strategic sectors from being taken over by other countries.
ADVOCATE MINISTER
Guido Crosetto, 59, is a lobbyist for the defence sector, a close friend of Meloni, and a founding member of her party. He started his political career in the 1980s with the Christian Democratic Party. He was a member of parliament for a long time, but he left in 2019 to lead AIAD, which is a group of companies in the aerospace and defence industries.
He is referred to as “the gentle giant” or “Shrek,” in allusion to the cartoon character, and is about two metres (6.6 feet) tall and bald. From 2008 until 2011, he was the junior defence minister in a Berlusconi-led administration.
ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY SECURITY MINISTER
The 68-year-old senator for Forza Italia, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, is thought to be particularly close to Berlusconi. He was the Draghi administration’s deputy industry minister and a licenced accountant.
In the past, he held a variety of positions in his native Piedmont region in northern Italy, including chairman of the community’s employment, trade, and consumer committees. He doesn’t seem to have prior experience working on environmental or energy-related concerns.
COURT MINISTER
The former prosecutor of Venice, Carlo Nordio, a 75-year-old Brothers of Italy lawmaker who retired from that position in 2017, is well-known in Italy. He has asked for more steps to speed up the process, saying that Italy’s notoriously slow court system hurts the country’s economy.
The so-called “Clean Hands” corruption investigations, which in the early 1990s brought down Italy’s political establishment, were fiercely opposed by him, who charged the prosecutors with misusing their position. In spite of Berlusconi’s opposition, who wanted a Forza Italia member in the ministry, Meloni demanded that he be given the position.
