Meeting a far right politician for advice on how to handle rising migration does not sound like anyone’s idea of light relief. Yet for Keir Starmer, this week’s summit with Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, may have proved a welcome diversion after weeks of anger about winter fuel payments and now new questions over why a Labour donor paid for clothing worn by Starmer’s wife, Victoria.
Yet summer, as it often does in Italy, has brought with it a whiff of controversy here, too, meaning Meloni will also have been glad of something else to discuss.
It is claimed that her sister Arianna head of the leadership group that runs Giorgia’s Fratelli d’Italia party, has been influence-peddling in key public sector appointments, including in the national broadcasting service, Rai, and the state railways. This is serious stuff in Italy, with a maximum prison sentence of up to four and a half years.
The claims came to a head when Alessandro Sallusti, editor-in-chief of the right wing Milan daily Il Giornale, wrote a front-page opinion column on August 18 under the headline “Vogliono indagare Arianna Meloni” (“They want to investigate Arianna Meloni”).
By “they” he meant left wing media, politicians and prosecutors, including the Naples-based daily newspaper Fanpage and Matteo Renzi’s liberal Italia Viva party. Raffaella Paita, a senator in Renzi’s party, has been a leading voice in demanding a government response to the allegations.
“Arianna Meloni was in the newspapers yesterday for her influence on appointments at Rai, today for the state railways,” she wrote on Twitter/X. “At this point I ask myself: couldn’t she directly make herself the minister of programme implementation?”
In a phone call with the national newspaper ANSA, Giorgia Meloni responded to the allegations, saying: “They have moved on to smear campaigns and the elaboration of theories in hopes of some fanciful investigation against people close to me, starting with my sister, Arianna.”
Meloni’s 49-year-old sister was not quite as vocal in public about the claims. The self-described “rebel of the family” was named by her younger sister as head of the political secretariat of Fratelli d’Italia in August last year and has special responsibility for growing its membership.
Arianna recently split up with her long-term partner and father of her two children, Francesco Lollobrigida. Lollobrigida, whose great-aunt was the Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, currently serves as Italy’s minister of agriculture.
“Yes it’s true, we haven’t been together for a while,” Arianna told the liberal newspaper Il Foglio in the days after Sallusti’s column appeared.
But the two are still close, it seems. “For Lollo,” she said, “I would throw myself into the Tiber, as they say in Rome.”
Il Foglio is the only paper Arianna spoke to about the allegations, and she railed against “a certain type of journalism”, which, she complained, “continually brings me into the picture, describing me as having been grappling with nominations and power plots for two years. This depresses me.”
She then took to Instagram, telling her followers: “At this point I ask myself, but isn’t it a strategy? A strategy developed and studied not to destroy me, who clearly has little importance as an activist, but perhaps to smear and paint the sister of the prime minister as a trafficker, as slimy?”
Arianna then addressed Renzi, who, she said, “still doesn’t understand: I have NEVER participated in any meeting that had government appointments as its object.”
In light of everything, the “smear campaign”, as Arianna and her sister term it, has been a burning topic of conversation here in Italy.
“It is not certain what is true and what is not true,” says Barbara Rossini, a Lazio-based Fratelli d’Italia supporter who voted for Giorgia Meloni in the national elections two years ago, and who is typical of her support base.
“I don’t think it’s 100% true, but it has made me think a bit, although I am very happy with the party I voted for, and the country.”
Barbara is the only person in her family who voted for Fratelli d’Italia. The main appeal of the party for her was that Meloni was the only female candidate in an all-male lineup.
Maria Ricci, a voter who lives in Abruzzo, takes a more critical view of Meloni and her family’s involvement in politics. “Of course it has to be real, look at everything,” she says. “Meloni (Giorgia) appointed Meloni (Arianna) and Meloni (Giorgia) appointed Lollobrigida.”
“Maybe Meloni (Arianna) influenced the decision to make her friends do some very important jobs, too. It’s Italy after all: nepotism is everywhere. I see it in my work. A lot of people are friends with the boss.”
Those “friends” of Arianna Meloni apparently include Sabrina De Filippis, the head of Italy’s state railway company (Gruppo Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane), and Giuseppina Di Foggia, the first female chief executive officer of Terna, an infrastructure company.
Di Foggia was appointed in May 2023, three months before Arianna Meloni took up her current role within the government, and claims not to know Arianna well at all. The national newspaper La Repubblica has previously reported that the “two seem like friends”.
The judiciary dismissed the claims as nonsensical. The National Association of Magistrates said the allegations were “based on possibility and not certainty,” adding that “it’s an error to point the finger at the judiciary”.
In some ways, Arianna’s situation is comparable to the way the media covered the ups and downs of Silvio Berlusconi’s career – a frenzy of interest, followed by silence. Journalists are no longer writing or investigating the Meloni question. The heat has gone out of the argument.
“I really believe that something is bigger than just gossip, but it is presented as gossip, which makes it hard to get evidence, or hard to believe,” says Maria Ricci.
“It was fun to see everything unfold, but nothing will ever come of this story, it never does. It’s like a teen drama: rumours are everywhere.”
