Italy’s Meloni named Europe’s most powerful figure

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was named Europe’s most powerful figure in Politico’s annual list.

Meloni, the head of a formerly fascist party, was once “dismissed as an ultranationalist kook” but is now a key player in Brussels and Washington.

The list is also notable for who is not on it: French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are nowhere to be seen. “Their influence has waned,” Politico’s editors wrote, “leaving others… to step in and fill the void.”

The eastward shift of Europe’s power center is represented by four Poles making the list of 28, and, as befits Europe’s bureaucratic reputation, several names are “civil servants and political appointees who rarely attract recognition beyond Brussels.”