Why Giorgia Meloni's four-year milestone matters far beyond Italy

When Giorgia Meloni took office in October 2022, the question in most international commentary was how long she would last. Italy had become synonymous with political instability — governments changed constantly, coalitions fractured, and European partners had learned to treat Rome as important but unpredictable.

Nearly four years later, the question has been answered. On 4 September, Meloni's government reached 1,413 consecutive days in office, the longest-serving government in the history of the Italian Republic, a country that has had 68 governments since the Second World War. That alone is significant. Her durability has changed Italy's standing in Europe and the world, strengthened its capacity for long-term foreign policy, and — most visibly outside Europe — transformed its relationship with India.

Also Read: Meloni government becomes Italy's longest-lasting


At the Fratelli d'Italia gathering in the port of Bari, marking the anniversary over the weekend, Meloni framed longevity as a means rather than an end. "Stability is the first great reform we have given the nation," she said, arguing that Italy is now taken seriously at international tables and increasingly able to shape European debates rather than simply follow them.

Italy had long possessed the ingredients of a major power without the continuity to use them: a G7 economy, a founding member of the EU and NATO, a manufacturing and defence-industrial base, and a key position at the centre of the Mediterranean. Frequent changes of government meant frequent changes of priority, with no strategy sustained long enough to matter internationally. What Meloni has supplied, comparatively rare in Italian politics, is continuity.

France and Britain have both cycled through governments during the years Meloni has remained in Palazzo Chigi. Italy, once one of Europe's standing sources of uncertainty, has instead become a fixed point during a period of war in Europe, upheaval in the Middle East, renewed competition with China, and strain in the transatlantic relationship.

Also Read: ‘Reflection of trust’: PM Modi congratulates Giorgia Meloni on becoming Italy's longest serving Prime Minister

The congratulations Meloni received reflected that. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said that at a moment of "profound geopolitical uncertainty," the stability and authority she provides to Italy and Europe are highly valued. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte thanked Italy for being a strong ally. Messages also came from Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša and Polish President Karol Nawrocki.

No relationship illustrates the effect of that continuity better than the one with India. Meloni visited India twice in 2023. Her March state visit, as chief guest at the Raisina Dialogue, elevated bilateral ties to a Strategic Partnership. She returned in September for the G20 Summit, where Italy joined the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) and the Global Biofuels Alliance. India's Ministry of External Affairs later noted that Italy had become the only Western European country participating in nearly all of India's major international initiatives — the International Solar Alliance, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative, the Global Biofuels Alliance and IMEC among them.

The personal rapport between Meloni and Narendra Modi became part of the story. "Melodi," a social-media portmanteau of their names, took on a visibility unusual for diplomacy — images and warmth from their meetings travelled well beyond diplomatic circles, particularly in India, and built goodwill that outlasted the joke.

In 2024, the two governments adopted a Joint Strategic Action Plan for 2025-2029, expanding cooperation across defence, manufacturing, energy, space, technology, migration, research and connectivity. When Modi visited Rome this past May, the relationship was elevated again, to a Special Strategic Partnership — its highest level yet — with a target of €20 billion in bilateral trade by 2029 and plans to deepen defence-industrial cooperation, including co-design and co-production. Meloni described the visit as the culmination of a process built "with consistency and determination," producing "a sincere friendship based on respect and mutual trust."

Modi's message this week made the same point from the other side. "Congratulations to my friend Prime Minister Meloni on becoming the longest continuously serving Prime Minister in Italy's postwar history," he wrote, calling it a reflection of the trust of the Italian people and crediting the friendship with having been "instrumental in strengthening the India-Italy Special Strategic Partnership." Meloni replied that the relationship was "stronger than ever."

The two countries increasingly describe each other not as bilateral partners so much as anchors of a wider geography: India at the centre of the Indo-Pacific and Indian Ocean, Italy in the Mediterranean with access to continental Europe, and IMEC as the corridor connecting them through the Gulf. In a joint article published during Modi's May visit, the two leaders underlined the importance of the "Indo-Mediterranean" space — a corridor for trade, technology, energy, data and ideas running from the Indian Ocean to Europe which, four years ago, under Prime Minister Draghi, were only “seeds”.

Former Foreign Minister and current Senator Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata has made the case for that shift explicitly in the Senate, describing Meloni's March 2023 visit as the start of a "completely new path" with India — not a diplomatic label but a partnership already producing "extraordinary results" — and tying it directly to Europe's wider engagement with the Indo-Pacific.

Her broader significance to Europe and conservative politics lies in that combination of political identity and strategic pragmatism. The predictions that her government would isolate Italy within Europe have not held up: Italy has stayed firmly Atlanticist, backed Ukraine, worked within EU institutions, and simultaneously expanded ties with India, the Indo-Pacific, Africa and the Mediterranean.

None of this erases her government's challenges. Italy still faces weak productivity, illegal immigration, wage pressure, demographic decline and gaps in public services, and several of its institutional reforms have stalled. Longevity is not the same as success, as Meloni herself acknowledged at Bari: a stable government is not automatically a more capable one, only one that has had the time to be judged.

Senator Matteo Gelmetti put the milestone differently, calling the 1,413 days not a mere record but the symbol of stability restored after years of fragile governments, and evidence that Italy has regained "international authority, political stability and a leadership capable of assuming responsibility for its choices."

That continuity has value precisely because it has become scarce. The international system is being reordered at once by the war in Ukraine, instability in the Middle East, competition in the Indo-Pacific, a shifting transatlantic relationship, and contests over supply chains, energy and artificial intelligence. Europe needs leaders who can hold alliances together while building relationships beyond the Atlantic core, and India — a democratic power, an Indo-Pacific actor, a manufacturing and technology hub and an increasingly assertive voice of the Global South — sits at the centre of that need. Meloni appears to have grasped this earlier than most of her European counterparts, treating the India relationship as strategic rather than episodic, withdrawing from Italy’s China BRI MoU and using it to connect the Mediterranean to the Indo-Pacific.

Meloni and Modi also share more than convenient timing: both place heavy emphasis on national identity, strategic autonomy and civilisational heritage, and on their countries acting as independent poles rather than followers within a changing order. "Melodi" began as a hashtag; the partnership beneath it has become considerably more consequential.

Four years ago, the question in European capitals was whether Meloni would survive. Today, it is what Europe can do with the stability Italy has built. For India, the answer is already visible in one of the continent's fastest-growing partnerships with New Delhi. For Italy, it is a foreign policy conducted over years rather than months. For Europe, which finds itself at a crossroads, at a moment when its crises no longer arrive one at a time, that continuity may matter more than the number 1,413 itself.

(Vas Shenoy is the founder of the Indo-Mediterranean Initiative (cnky.in). He is an Italian analyst and entrepreneur of Indian origin)