Giorgia Meloni will officially take over as Italy’s first woman prime minister on Sunday, a day after she was sworn in as leader of the country’s most right-wing government since World War II.

The transfer of power from the outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi to Meloni takes place in the Chigi Palace in Rome, followed shortly afterwards by a first cabinet meeting.

At the symbolic act at the seat of the Italian government, the former head of the European Central Bank, Draghi, who has been in office since February 2021, will present a bell with which the cabinet president will lead the cabinet debates.

European Union leaders, wary of the far-right takeover, said on Saturday they were ready to work with the new coalition government led by Meloni’s post-fascist and Eurosceptic Brothers of Italy party.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Meloni and said she had “good” phone calls with her, while Meloni said she was ready to work with the bloc’s leaders.

The daily newspaper La Stampa spoke on its front page on Sunday of a “European beginning”. “Meloni: to work, with pride,” smashed the Corriere della Sera.

On Saturday, Meloni and her 24 ministers took the oath before President Sergio Mattarella at Rome’s Quirinal Palace, once the seat of Italy’s popes and kings.

The appointment of the 45-year-old is a historic event for the eurozone’s third largest economy and for the brothers of Italy, who have never been in government.

It won 26 percent of the vote in last month’s election, compared with eight and nine percent respectively for Meloni’s coalition partners, former leader Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the far-right League led by Matteo Salvini.

A former admirer of former dictator Benito Mussolini, Meloni has managed to distance her party from its fascist roots.

Major challenges await the new government, including rising inflation and Italy’s high debt ratio – the highest in the eurozone after Greece.

Meloni’s cabinet, including six women, hints at a desire to reassure Italy’s partners. She appointed Giancarlo Giorgetti as Economy Minister, who served under the previous government of Mario Draghi.

Giorgetti, a former economy minister, is seen as one of the more moderate, pro-European members of Salvini’s league.

Meloni also appointed former President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani of Forza Italia as foreign minister and deputy prime minister.

Salvini will serve as deputy prime minister and minister for infrastructure and transport, which is likely to disappoint Salvini.

He wanted the role of Home Secretary, a post he previously held between 2018 and 2019. That instead went to a technocrat, the prefect of Rome, Matteo Piantedosi.

The talks to form a government had been overshadowed by disagreements with their two possible coalition partners.

Italian news media made much of Berlusconi’s recorded comments in defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin, remarks he insists were taken out of context.

Salvini is also a longtime Putin fan and criticizes Western sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Despite her Eurosceptic stance, however, Meloni has firmly backed Kyiv, in line with the rest of the European Union and the United States.

On Saturday, she reiterated her desire to work with NATO, which she described as “more than a military alliance: a bulwark of shared values ??that we will never stop standing for”.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and US President Joe Biden sent their congratulations to Meloni, as did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Meloni said Italy will “always stand on the side of the brave people of Ukraine”.

But tensions with her coalition partners are already raising questions about her ability to hold a majority in Italy’s notoriously volatile parliamentary system.

Conservative European leaders, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, hailed a right-wing victory.