Who is Giorgia Meloni? Far-right leader may be Italy's first female leader

Especially as it pertains to her positions on Europe, she has moderated more noticeably than the other Western European nationalist who earlier this year made a run for power, France’s Marine Le Pen. While Le Pen’s platform had ideas that would have led to standoffs with Brussels — like prioritizing national law over E.U. law — Meloni’s does not, said Luigi Scazzieri, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.

“This kind of sanitization and Europeanization has gone a lot further in Meloni’s case than in Le Pen’s,” Scazzieri said.