Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni on Friday announced separation from her longtime boyfriend television journalist Andrea Giambruno, who recently came under furore for making sexist comments on air.
"My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted almost 10 years, ends here. Our paths have diverged for some time, and the time has come to acknowledge it," Meloni wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
"I will defend what we were, I will defend our friendship, and I will defend, at all costs, a seven-year-old girl who loves her mother and loves her father, as I was unable to love mine. I have nothing else to say about this", she added.
Giambruno and Meloni were not married and have been in a relationship for almost 10 years. The couple have a seven-year-old daughter.
{{/usCountry}}Giambruno and Meloni were not married and have been in a relationship for almost 10 years. The couple have a seven-year-old daughter.
{{/usCountry}}According to Reuters, Giambruno, who hosts the show "Diario del Giorno" on Mediaset, part of the MFE media group, recently came under flak when his off-air excerpts from the program showed him using foul language and appearing to make advances to a female colleague.
The TV journalist in August was widely criticised for his apparent victim-blaming comments following a gang rape case saying that women could avoid rape by not getting too drunk.
"If you go dancing, you have every right to get drunk - there shouldn't be any kind of misunderstanding and any kind of problem - but if you avoid getting drunk and losing your senses, you might also avoid running into certain problems and coming across a wolf," he said during his program.
However, Meloni had said after that episode that she should not be judged for comments made by her partner, and that in future she would not answer questions about his behaviour.
Meloni met Giambruno in 2015 when he was working as a writer for a TV show on which Meloni appeared.