When Italy recently passed a law to punish people who seek a surrogate birth abroad with large fines and prison sentences, there was some outrage. But it didn’t seem to last very long.
Sure, the law was vocally criticized by some progressive public figures: “Please someone explain to me how this is a crime?” the comedian Luciana Littizzetto asked on the popular evening show “Che Tempo Che Fa” (What’s the Weather Like?). Elly Schlein, the leader of the center-left Democratic Party, called it “atrocious propaganda at the expense of children.” And Arcigay, Italy’s largest L.G.B.T.Q.+ association, slammed the law as “a grave negation of individual rights” and announced protests.
But the day after the bill passed I checked the newspapers, expecting it to be the main news, and in many cases it wasn’t — several papers led with a story about budget cuts instead. Then it more or less disappeared from the news cycle and was confined to small, progressive circles on social media.
It was another example of a pattern that has become familiar here: The government of Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s right-wing prime minister, does something that sparks an outcry among progressives and some media coverage, but fails to really outrage the wider public. The policy stays, Ms. Meloni’s ratings remain strong, and Italy inches to the right with little more than a shrug.
It’s well established that Ms. Meloni, who has her political roots in the post-fascist Italian Social Movement, has successfully crafted a double identity as prime minister: moderate abroad, hard-liner at home. Internationally, her government has demonstrated unwavering support to Ukraine and NATO on the Russian invasion, for example, despite her having expressed support for Vladimir Putin in the past.
But at home Ms. Meloni has also had to thread a fine needle to advance her conservative agenda without alienating the Italian public. And so far, she’s succeeding: In a country where cabinets and positive approval ratings are usually infamously short-lived, Ms. Meloni is becoming a rare paragon of stability. A comparative analysis of opinion polls since 2008 by the fact-checking website Pagella Politica shows that her cabinet’s approval ratings, while not stellar, have been consistent since her inauguration, a sharp contrast with most preceding governments. Two years after her election, her cabinet is already among the longest-lasting in Italy’s history.
This longevity is not merely the product of luck or circumstance. Ms. Meloni has been able to maintain her hold on her fans on the right as well as the lukewarm support of the wider, more moderate public with policies and pronouncements that are right-wing enough to please the former without alienating the latter. In Italy, surrogacy fits this bill.
Both altruistic and commercial surrogacy are well-established practices in the United States that the majority of people support, but in Italy they were already a crime — the recent bill simply makes them prosecutable if committed abroad. Commercial surrogacy, in which the gestational carrier is compensated, is unlawful across the E.U., and some 76 percent of Italians oppose it. Some Italian progressives insist that surrogacy, particularly in exchange for payment, is exploitative, and public figures who voice any support for any form of it often do so cautiously. Ms. Littizzetto, for example, stopped short of saying she approved: “I have no certainties on such a complex, gigantic, delicate matter,” she said, in the same episode of “Che Tempo Che Fa.”
As well as the surrogacy bill, Ms. Meloni is pushing a security law that would crack down on the rights of protesters; she has struck a deal to hold asylum seekers in Albania while their claims are assessed (though this plan has been halted by a court order for now); and exercises a firm grip on the state-owned broadcaster.
These policies are all on the right of the political spectrum, but they are not completely outside of Italy’s mainstream. Polls suggest that a vast majority of Italians would like a stronger police presence. According to a 2023 survey, 64 percent of Italians favor stronger border control and 45 percent strongly agree with the statement that immigrants are a threat to public security. And Italians grew accustomed to tightly controlled media in the days of Silvio Berlusconi.
At the same time, Ms. Meloni has astutely avoided social issues that could become breaking points, either because they are politically extreme or because they might convey an image of overconfidence. For example, she has mostly restricted herself to symbolic pronouncements on abortion, which has the support of some 80 percent of Italians.
By steering clear of these possible oversteps she has avoided the appearance of hubris, which in Italy has sometimes proved ruinous to politicians. Consider Matteo Renzi, the prime minister from 2014 to 2016, who staked his tenure on an ambitious constitutional referendum that would have given the executive branch more power, and was forced to step down after a crushing defeat. Or Matteo Salvini, who served as interior minister between 2018 and 2019 in a coalition where he was the most popular figure and, some argued, de facto leader. Mr. Salvini pushed for early elections but failed miserably and sank from relevance before popping up again as Ms. Meloni’s deputy prime minister.
Perhaps Ms. Meloni’s own moment of overreach is inevitable. But for now, at least, she seems to know exactly what she’s doing.
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