Guido Crosetto

After Berlusconi's resignation in November 2011, Crosetto criticized the formation of the new cabinet led by pro-austerity economist Mario Monti. In December 2012, he founded Brothers of Italy (FdI), a national conservative party in opposition to the PdL and to the Monti government, with Giorgia Meloni and Ignazio La Russa,[10][11] From 20 December 2012 until 4 April 2013, Crosetto served as president of the party.[12]

Crosetto and Giorgia Meloni at a FdI rally in 2014

As a candidate for the Senate of the Republic, Crosetto failed to be elected in the 2013 general election, because FdI votes did not exceed the threshold set at 3% by the electoral law known as Porcellum.[13] In the following year, Crosetto ran in the 2014 European Parliament election in Italy, but he was not elected because once again FdI votes did not exceed the threshold set at 4% for European elections in Italy.[14] On the same day, Crosetto ran in the 2014 Piedmontese regional election as gubernatiorial candidate for FdI and ran alone outside the centre-right coalition led by Berlusconi's FI. In this election, Matteo Salvini's Lega Nord (LN) was allied with FI against FdI, supporting Gilberto Pichetto Fratin's candidacy. In the election, Crosetto arrived at the fourth place, gaining only 5.2% of votes.[15] Following the 2014 election defeats, Crosetto retired from politics in September 2014 and Salvini became closer to Giorgia Meloni's FdI because, without Crosetto, the party moved further to the right-wing.

Crosetto returned to politics when the deputy Daniela Santanchè, a right-wing businesswoman and former member of PdL and FI in Lombardy, joined Meloni's FdI in December 2017. Crosetto and Santanchè in FdI represented the small and medium-sized enterprises of Northern Italy in the 2018 Italian general election and they became respectively members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic because the party's electoral support increased, surpassing 4.3% of votes at the national level, for the first time.[16][17] However, Crosetto resigned on 13 March 2019 to continue his business career,[1] and after two days his former seat was assigned to the first candidate on the list of non-elected at the 2018 general election, the businesswoman and FdI member Lucrezia Mantovani.[18] In April and May 2019, as non-candidate spokesman of the party, Crosetto helped Meloni in the campaign for the 2019 European Parliament election in Italy and FdI, which became a member of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), increased its electoral support, surpassing 6.4% of national level votes, for the first time.

In September 2014 Guido Crosetto left his political commitment and was appointed President of the Federation of Italian Companies for Aerospace, Defence and Security (AIAD) of Confindustria and in the same year he became Senior Advisor to Leonardo S.p.A.

In April 2020 he was appointed Chairman of Orizzonte Sistemi Navali, a company created as a joint venture between Fincantieri and Leonardo S.p.A., which operates in the naval engineering and systems sector, designing and building military naval units, in particular corvettes, frigates and aircraft carriers.

Crosetto with President Sergio Mattarella in 2023

In 2022, a snap election was called after the 2022 Italian government crisis which brought to the fall of the national unity government of Mario Draghi opposed by FdI,[19][20] in a record-low voter turnout election,[21] Brothers of Italy became the largest party in the country, gaining more than 26% of votes and the centre-right coalition won a clear majority in both houses.[22][23] Crosetto did not run in the election, however, he campaigned for FdI and its leader, Meloni. On 22 October 2022, Crosetto was appointed Minister of Defence in the government led by Meloni herself, who became the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of Italy.[24]

As a minister, Crosetto became one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine against the Russian invasion.[25] In February 2023, he stated that the Ukrainian resistance was "a battle for freedom, a battle for international law, a battle for Europe".[26] Moreover he added that the NATO's military support to Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government prevented the break out of World War III, which would have been inevitable if "Russian tanks reached Kyiv".[27] Due to his statements, Crosetto has often been the target of attacks from members of the Russian government and elite. Former president Dmitry Medvedev labeled him as "foolish", while Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group, heavily insulted him.[28] On 15 March, the Italian newspaper Il Foglio reported that the Wagner Group put a 15 million euro bounty on Crosetto.[29]

During his ministry, Crosetto often criticized the migration policies promoted by Germany and its chancellor Olaf Scholz.[30][31][32][33]