Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has issued a stark warning, predicting that 2026 “will be much worse” than 2025.<\/p>\n
The 48-year-old made the not-so-festive prediction during the traditional exchange of Christmas greetings with the staff of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.<\/p>\n
“The end of 2025 has been difficult for all of us. Don’t worry, because next year will be much worse,” Meloni said.<\/p>\n
“So, get some proper rest during these holidays, because we must continue to respond to this extraordinary nation,” she continued.<\/p>\n
Speaking from the Government Palace in Rome, Meloni described 2025 as a year defined by continuous wars \u2014 portraying her administration as a \u201cfamily\u201d that had fought on multiple fronts.<\/p>\n
The speech is part of an annual tradition in which Italy’s leader usually gives the nation a message of hope.<\/p>\n
For example, last year, Meloni wished “Merry Christmas” to those who “can’t be with their families” during the holidays, including essential service workers like the armed forces, police, doctors and nurses.<\/p>\n
Her comments came as Italy’s government prepares to debate extending arms sales to Ukraine at its last cabinet meeting of the year.<\/p>\n
Her speech also seemed to mark a drastic shift from Meloni’s more optimistic rhetoric over the past two years, during which time she has positioned herself as a pragmatic bridge between the US and the European Union.<\/p>\n
But with Italy entering 2026 with one of the highest levels of public debt in the Eurozone, around 137% of GDP, coupled with high interest rates and a government divided over continued support for Ukraine, Meloni’s remarks were much more somber. \/Telegraph\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has issued a stark warning, predicting that 2026 “will be much worse” than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,23551,1224,111,139,69,3461],"class_list":["post-202568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-giorgia-meloni","tag-italy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}