The rankings were devised and published by Politico on Tuesday in its Class of 2025 rankings.

“Who do you call if you want to speak to Europe?” Politico asks.

“If you’re Elon Musk - the world’s richest man and a key adviser to United States President-elect Donald Trump - the number you dial belongs to Giorgia Meloni,” the magazine wrote.

It also described her as the perfect “representative of the ever-more-radical zeitgeist blossoming on both sides of the Atlantic”.

“In less than a decade, the leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party has gone from being dismissed as an ultranationalist kook to being elected prime minister of Italy and establishing herself as a figure with whom Brussels, and now Washington, can do business.”

Politico wrote a long description of Meloni’s rise to power and the main events of her two years in government, a period described as one of the most stable in post-war Italy.

ANSA