Giorgia Meloni will on Friday become the longest-serving prime minister of the Italian Republic, a distinction that would have seemed improbable when she took office in October 2022 at the head of a coalition many observers expected to fracture within months. The milestone, 1,413 consecutive days, one more than Silvio Berlusconi managed with his second government between June 2001 and April 2005, will be marked with a rally in Rome organised by her Brothers of Italy party. Yet the celebration cannot obscure the structural fragilities that still define Italian politics.
How the record was built
Meloni's tenure began on 22 October 2022, after a general election that gave the centre-right coalition a clear parliamentary majority: 237 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 115 in the Senate. The three parties, Brothers of Italy, Matteo Salvini's League and Berlusconi's Forza Italia, entered government with a shared programme centred on tax cuts, stricter migration controls and a more assertive posture in Brussels. What distinguished this coalition from its many predecessors was not ideological harmony but a mutual calculation that early elections would hurt all three.
Brothers of Italy, the senior partner, has governed as a pragmatic conservative force rather than the radical nationalist party its critics feared. Meloni kept Italy firmly in the Western camp on Ukraine, supported the EU's revised fiscal rules negotiated in 2024, and avoided the kind of confrontational rhetoric that brought down previous populist administrations. In return, she has allowed Salvini leeway on infrastructure spending and internal security, while Forza Italia has been accommodated on justice reform and European Parliament candidacies.
The Berlusconi benchmark
Berlusconi's 1,412-day record has stood for two decades. His second government, formed after the May 2001 landslide, survived until April 2005 when a poor showing in regional elections forced a cabinet reshuffle, technically a new government, resetting the clock. That administration benefited from a strong economy, a compliant media environment and an opposition divided between the centre-left and the radical left. Meloni has had none of those advantages: she inherited an economy stagnating at 0.7% growth, a public debt of 144% of GDP, and an opposition that, while fragmented, has been relentless in scrutinising her migration deals and judicial appointments.
The comparison is also complicated by the nature of the two coalitions. Berlusconi's Forza Italia was a personalist vehicle built around its founder; Meloni's Brothers of Italy is a structured party with a defined hierarchy and a younger leadership cadre. The League and Forza Italia today are diminished versions of their 2001 selves, the League polling around 8-9%, Forza Italia near 6%, which paradoxically makes them more dependent on the coalition's survival.
Market confidence and the spread dividend
The most tangible dividend of Meloni's longevity has been financial. The BTP-Bund spread, the yield premium investors demand to hold Italian 10-year bonds over German equivalents, has fallen from a peak of 240 basis points in October 2022 to below 130 basis points in August 2026, its lowest level since the Draghi government. Bank of Italy data show foreign holdings of Italian sovereign debt have risen by €45 billion over the same period. Rating agencies have kept Italy at investment grade with stable outlooks, citing the government's adherence to EU fiscal targets and the absence of political crisis.
This stability premium matters. Italy's debt service costs in 2025 were €78 billion, or 3.9% of GDP, down from 4.3% in 2022, partly because the average maturity of new issuance has lengthened and marginal rates have eased. The Treasury's 2026 funding plan assumes a further €5 billion saving if spreads remain at current levels. For a country that spends more on interest than on education, that margin is not trivial.
The autumn budget test
The record will be celebrated days before the real work resumes. By 20 September the government must submit its Structural Budget Plan to the European Commission under the reformed Stability and Growth Pact, which requires a credible four-year path to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio. The Commission's spring 2026 forecast projects Italy's debt at 143.5% of GDP this year, falling to 141.2% by 2028, a trajectory that assumes primary surpluses of 1.5% of GDP annually, a level Italy has rarely achieved.
Meloni's coalition is divided on how to reach those targets. Brothers of Italy favours spending restraint and targeted tax cuts for families; the League demands a flat-tax extension for the self-employed and higher infrastructure outlays; Forza Italia pushes for pension adjustments and judicial reform funding. The prime minister has so far mediated by deferring hard choices, the 2025 budget passed with a modest 0.4% of GDP structural adjustment, well below the 0.6% the Commission recommended. That latitude will not persist. The new rules allow the Commission to open an Excessive Deficit Procedure if the structural effort falls short, and Italy's high debt makes it a prime candidate for enhanced surveillance.
Migration: the fault line that hasn't closed
No issue has tested the coalition more than migration. Meloni campaigned on a naval blockade and mass deportations; in office she has pursued a mix of externalisation deals, the Albania agreement for processing asylum seekers, the Tunisia memorandum backed by EU funds, and accelerated repatriation procedures. Arrivals by sea fell from 105,000 in 2023 to 58,000 in 2025, according to Interior Ministry data, but the Albania centres have operated below capacity due to legal challenges, and the Tunisia deal has been criticised by the UNHCR for inadequate safeguards.
Salvini has repeatedly accused the prime minister of softness, threatening to withdraw League ministers if deportation numbers do not rise. Forza Italia, more attuned to business demands for seasonal labour, has pushed for expanded quota decrees. The resulting policy zigzag, stricter rules on paper, pragmatic exceptions in practice, has satisfied neither the hardline base nor the agricultural employers in the south. It remains the single most likely trigger for a coalition crisis before the natural end of the legislature in 2027.
The PNRR implementation gap
Italy is the largest beneficiary of the EU's Recovery and Resilience Facility, with €194.4 billion in grants and loans conditional on 600-odd milestones and targets. As of June 2026, the government had formally satisfied 340 of them, unlocking €102 billion in disbursements. But the Court of Auditors' latest report flags a persistent implementation gap: only 38% of allocated funds have reached final beneficiaries, with the Mezzogiorno regions absorbing less than 25% of their earmarked share. Delays in public procurement reform, judicial backlogs affecting contract disputes, and a shortage of project management capacity in southern administrations are the main bottlenecks.
Meloni has centralised PNRR governance under the presidency of the council, bypassing line ministries to accelerate decisions. The approach has sped up approvals but created friction with regions and municipalities, which argue they are being treated as execution arms rather than partners. The next tranche, €18 billion tied to green transition and digitalisation targets, requires legislative changes to the public procurement code that the League has resisted on grounds of local autonomy.
Opposition fragmentation and the next election
The centre-left Democratic Party (PD), the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the Greens-Left Alliance together poll around 42-45%, but they have not agreed on a joint platform or a prime ministerial candidate. Elly Schlein's PD has moved left on labour and civil rights, alienating the moderate voters a broad coalition would need. Giuseppe Conte's M5S remains wary of any alliance that dilutes its anti-establishment brand. The centrist Action and Italia Viva parties, polling 5-6% combined, refuse to align with either pole. This fragmentation is the government's best insurance: as long as the opposition cannot present a credible alternative, the coalition's internal disputes are containable.
The electoral law, however, is a time bomb. The Rosatellum's majority bonus, which gave the centre-right 56% of seats with 44% of votes in 2022, was declared partially unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in 2024. Parliament has not yet replaced it. If the legislature runs its full term, the 2027 election will likely be fought under a pure proportional system, which would almost certainly deny any coalition an absolute majority and return Italy to the post-election bargaining that produced the technocratic governments of Monti, Draghi and, briefly, Conte II.
People mentioned
Organisations
Italian Government · Brothers of Italy · League · Forza Italia · European Commission
