Italian PM Giorgia Meloni Praised by World Leaders for Quitting Smoking

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni won praise from her fellow world leaders at the G7 summit this week - after revealing she quit smoking.

The 49-year-old has previously hit headlines for her heavy smoking habit, joking in October last year that she could “kill somebody” if she were forced to quit.

However, on Tuesday, during a chat picked up by a hot mic at the sidelines of the summit of wealthy nations, she made a comment about having to have three coffees to which German chancellor Friedrich Merz quipped: “And a cigarette?”

Meloni replied:”No, I stopped.”

Her declaration was met with support from her fellow world leaders as Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi, also a committed smoker, praised her saying: “You stopped it. Bravo.”

Asked how long it had been, Meloni confirmed it had been “a month” since she quit the habit.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, a trained medical doctor by profession, said: “Good”.

Canadian prime minister Mark Carney asked: “Do you have a patch?” as he grabbed his own arm.

Von der Leyen then asked Antonio Costa, president of the European Council, if he had been a smoker. British prime minister Keir Starmer joined in, asking: “When did you stop?” to which Costa replied that he dropped the habit in 2005.

“And that’s it, you never went back?” asked Starmer.

“Never. Twenty-one years ago.”

Meloni has previously made tongue-in-cheek comments about her habit. In October 2025, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a staunch anti-tobaccoist told her: “You look great. But I have to make you stop smoking.”

French president Emmanuel Macron jumped in to the conversation saying: “It’s impossible!”

“I know, I know,” she said. “I don’t want to kill somebody.”

Meloni previously said in Giorgia’s Version, a book about her based on a series of interviews, that she had picked up smoking again after quitting for 13 years.

She said that the habit had allowed her to bond with other politicians including Tunisian president Kais Saied.

Last month researchers found that quitting smoking is associated with a reduced risk of dementia.

American adults who quit during a decade-long study of 32,800 participants had a 16 percent lower risk for the chronic condition than people who continued smoking, according to the study published in the journal Neurology, using data collected as part of the University of Michigan’s U.S. Health and Retirement Study.