Five years ago, after her party won six percent of the vote in the European elections, Giorgia Meloni was opening a bottle of sparkling wine when the cork fell awkwardly among some supporters.
After Italy's current prime minister, Meloni, won a landslide election victory this week, he and several dozen members of his Italian Brothers party celebrated in a five-star Rome hotel, where waiters brought wine bottles on silver tubs filled with ice. The far-right party won nearly 29 percent of the vote, a victory made all the more significant because Meloni was the only leader of a major Western European country to have gained ground in the polls.
The promotion couldn't have come at a better time for Meloni. All eyes are on Italy this week as he prepares to host the G7 summit for three days starting Thursday, a golden opportunity for him to position himself as a full member of the club of the world's most influential leaders.
“This country is going to the G7 and Europe with the strongest government,” she told supporters early Monday morning as the election results came in. “They couldn't stop us.”
When she became prime minister in 2022, her far-right, eurosceptic background and post-fascist roots sent shock waves throughout the European establishment, which now sees her as a pragmatic partner on key international issues.
Meloni's approach has become something of a model for other far-right leaders seeking to break into the mainstream.
In France, Marine Le Pen softened her stance on key issues and polished her image: Her National Rally party performed so well in the European Parliament elections, winning more than 30% of the vote, that President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called new parliamentary elections.
“Giorgia Meloni's government has definitely poisoned Europe,” Giovanni Donzelli, a lawmaker from the Italian Brothers party, said Sunday night. “Walls have fallen all over Europe. Everyone has realized that the right can govern well.”
Meloni has been courted in recent months by Europe's centre-right as a potential ally, as well as by parties further to the right seeking to create a united nationalist front.
While centrists maintain their dominance in the new European Parliament, Meloni could emerge as a key figure in individual votes, including upcoming ones, such as the re-election of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who needs parliamentary approval to be elected for a second term.
Experts say Meloni may decide to support von der Leyen as a way to exert more influence in Brussels.
“Melloni will play a key role in Europe,” said Mujtaba Rahman, European managing director at consultancy Eurasia Group. “He's centrist and constructive, so he'll get a lot out of it.”
On the broader international stage, Meloni's critical stance on issues such as aid to Ukraine sets him apart from other far-right figures with pro-Russia leanings.
That has given her good relations, especially with Western leaders gathering in Italy's southern region of Puglia this week ahead of elections.
“All the attention is on her,” said Roberto D'Alimonte, a political scientist at Rome's Luis Guido Carli University. “Her image is further enhanced.”
G7 attendees are expected to include President Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Senator Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel are also due to attend.
Meloni also invited several African leaders, including Pope Francis, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, India's re-elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to attend the summit. He vowed to focus the summit on development and cooperation plans with Africa.
The meeting takes place in Borgo Egnasia, a luxury resort with a sparkling pool surrounded by rosemary bushes and olive trees, where stone townhouses and villas are piled high with baskets of almonds and lemons, and narrow streets are lined with rusty bicycles and wooden horse-drawn carriages, bearing the marks of time.
However, the entire complex was built in the early 2000s on land destroyed by Mussolini to build an airbase. The resort is a recreation of an ancient Puglia town and farmhouse, which some locals say resembles a Mediterranean Potemkin village.
World leaders will be attending, following guests such as Madonna, the Beckhams, and Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, who all held their weddings at the resort.
“Meloni wanted to make a great impression, and I'm sure he will,” said Romeo Di Bari, 41, a shop owner in Alberobello, a town the partners are planning to visit, where on a recent afternoon boyfriends knelt on the cobblestones to snap photos of their partners twirling among the region's peaked trulli huts.
In the nearby city of Bari, locals hailed Meloni as bringing new prestige to the region and the country.
“We are at the forefront,” said Giovanni Pirlo, 68, a retired surveyor. “We have always been pushed to the side, but with Meloni something is changing.”
Meloni has struck a delicate balance between joining the European mainstream on international issues while pleasing his domestic supporters with tough stances on abortion and LGBT rights that have done little (or no harm) in Europe.
She has also juggled her role as a national woman with that of an international politician, insisting on calling Italians on a first-name basis, urging them to write “Giorgia” on their ballots and defending Italian interests in Brussels by helping to pass conservative policies on immigration and the environment.
At home, Mr. Meloni heads a stable coalition government, backed by two smaller parties desperate to keep him in power. Forza Italia, whose founder Silvio Berlusconi died last year, ran a séance-like campaign using Berlusconi's name and photo on billboards and won about 10% of the vote in European elections. Matteo Salvini's League, which appealed to the right of Mr. Meloni's base, fell from 34% in 2019 to 9% this year.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Italy's nationalist leaders is Italy itself, experts said.
Italy's productivity lags behind that of the European Union, wages have largely stagnated, and although employment is growing, youth unemployment remains widespread in the south and tens of thousands of young Italians leave the country every year.
In the town of Savelletri, just outside the resort hosting the G7, military trucks made their rounds as locals lounged in cafes near two newly built helipads.
Stefano Martellotta, a 51-year-old fisherman, said he wasn't particularly interested in what he called the G7 “show.” What worries him, he said, is that his two sons, ages 22 and 27, will have to emigrate to the Netherlands to work in restaurant kitchens because “no one pays them a decent salary” in Italy.
“The departure of young people is dramatic for us,” said AnamarÃa Santorsola, a 75-year-old mother and grandmother, adding that what her community needs “is jobs, not the G7.”