ROME — Italy’s president gave the go-ahead on Friday for Giorgia Meloni to be the country’s first female prime minister, leading the most right-wing government since World War II amid doubts about its commitment to European unity as economic and political pressures mount from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“We are ready,” Ms. Meloni said on Friday.
Ms. Meloni, leader of the hard-right Brothers of Italy, a party descended from the ashes of Italy’s failed experience with Fascism, emerged from last month’s election as the clear leader of the country’s victorious right-wing coalition. On Friday she presented her cabinet to Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, who, convinced she had the support to govern, gave her a mandate to form a government. She will be sworn in on Saturday morning, and will face confidence votes in Parliament next week.
When she takes office, Ms. Meloni will face surging inflation, an energy crisis and increasing pressure across the Italian political spectrum to alleviate Italy’s economic travails by softening support for Ukraine and opposition to Russia. Her own coalition members have themselves spurred doubts about Italy undercutting Europe’s united front against Russia.
Silvio Berlusconi, the linchpin of her coalition and a personal friend of Vladimir V. Putin, this week was caught on tape blaming Ukraine for the war and boasting about getting a gift of vodka from Mr. Putin. Her other coalition partner, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the anti-migrant League party and now a vice prime minister, used to wear T-shirts adorned with Mr. Putin’s face.
Ms. Meloni has vowed to keep providing Ukraine with military aid and has shown no signs of wavering. On Wednesday, she said that Italy was fully, and “with its head held high, part of Europe and the Atlantic alliance.” She warned that any coalition ally not willing to toe that line would not be in the government.
“Italy will never be the weak link of the West,” she promised.
But she has also made the European establishment nervous with her long history of making incendiary speeches against the European Union. She once entertained the idea of leaving the euro and previously aligned with the hard-right nationalist Marine Le Pen of France and the illiberal leader of Hungary, Viktor Orban. She has proposed a naval blockade to stop immigrants from Africa who she has complained were replacing native Italians.
In recent months, Ms. Meloni has mostly toned down her rhetoric and moved away from the euroskeptics — with notable exceptions during fiery remarks to her allies in the Spanish far-right party Vox. While she has a reputation within the Italian establishment for pragmatism and sharp intelligence, her leadership is nevertheless a whiplash-inducing change for Italy and Europe, which for two years has had Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, as the country’s prime minister.
Mr. Draghi’s nearly two years in office brought a remarkable period of economic growth, stability and international influence to Italy.
“Italy is a very strong country and it has shown a lot of power and credibility,” Mr. Draghi said in Brussels on Friday, responding to a reporter’s question about market reaction to his leaving the prime minister’s office.
Mr. Draghi, who spoke to Ms. Meloni on Friday, said he had no advice to give the new government, but said the work his government had done is “what an outgoing prime minister leaves to his successor.” He said that he had worked to ensure a smooth transition, but also made sure that all of his ministers prepared documents to make sure their successors were “informed.”
Ms. Meloni had hoped to appoint some nonpolitical technocrats to key positions, such as the economy ministry, to assuage concerns among international investors.
But many top picks turned her down. The list of ministers she presented on Friday comprised mostly politicians from the coalition parties. One of her own party members will lead an economic development department renamed in part Made in Italy, a nod to Ms. Meloni’s nationalism.
While opposition critics on Friday night already doubted whether her ministers would have the expertise to lead Italy through such trying times, some also raised concerns that they would lead Italy backward when it came to civil rights.
Eugenia Roccella, the minister of the newly named Ministry of Family, Natality and Equal Opportunity, has spoken out against abortion, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and assisted fertility. “We will be steadfast to avoid any temptation of a Polish or Hungarian drift,” Ivan Scalfarotto, a senator and L.G.B.T.Q. activist, wrote on Twitter.
Mr. Draghi, who was appointed to lead the country after the previous government collapsed, did not run for election. While he was deeply popular in Italy, no one candidate emerged to win over that support. Instead, the right-wing coalition easily beat the country’s fragmented and directionless left in elections.
Mr. Mattarella, Italy’s president, said Friday that “the clarity of the electoral outcome” made it easy to form a government in a short period of time.
But in recent days, internal fractures in the new governing coalition have erupted around Mr. Berlusconi, 86. Photographers took pictures of notes he had written describing Ms. Meloni as “overbearing, arrogant, offensive,” and his own party members leaked tape of him gushing over Mr. Putin.
On Friday, Ms. Meloni and her coalition members met with Mr. Mattarella to show that they were united behind her and could govern. They then stood together as Ms. Meloni delivered a statement, in which she said she was the “unanimous” choice to lead the country.
At that point, Mr. Berlusconi raised an eyebrow at Mr. Salvini, who seemed to suppress a smile. Corriere della Sera, the country’s leading paper, published the expressions in a slow-motion video.
Elisabetta Povoledo and Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.
