Salvini prepares to pitch populist alliance

Italian far-right leader aims to band together like-minded parties ahead of European election.

Italy’s far-right League party will on Monday host a conference at which it will seek to woo the governing party in Poland and others in a bid to form a Euroskeptic force in the European Parliament that can challenge the big mainstream groups.

The League said Thursday that Matteo Salvini, party leader and Italian interior minister, would host the event at a luxury hotel in central Milan under the banner “Towards a Europe of common sense.”

Several European Parliament officials said Salvini intends to make an appeal to Europe’s right-wing and populist parties at a press conference alongside Jörg Meuthen of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Several Nordic parties are in discussions to join the event in Milan, the officials said.

Salvini teaming up with the AfD marks the first step in the League’s push to unite the Continent’s populist parties, which have had difficulty speaking with one voice, under the banner of the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), the pan-EU group to which the League belongs.

However, while the addition of the AfD to the ENF would likely swell its ranks, it would need bigger new allies to really go after the big center-ground groups. To that end, officials say Salvini intends to address Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz.

“Salvini is well placed to launch an initiative and broaden our current group,” said Nicolas Bay, leader of France’s National Rally in the European Parliament. “The plan is to address those who are not yet our allies.”

The ENF currently has 37 MEPs, with the League joined by the National Rally, Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ), Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and the Dutch Freedom Party, among others.

The group could double in size in May’s election. According to POLITICO’s projections, the League could win 28 seats (up from the five it won in the 2014 ballot), with the National Rally on 21 and the AfD (assuming it joins the ENF) sending 13 MEPs to the assembly. If Salvini is successful with his pitch to Poland and Hungary, it could transform the Parliament as PiS is on track to win 27 seats and Fidesz 14.

However, PiS is part of another pan-EU group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, and has so far ruled out any formal alliance with Salvini. Fidesz is still a member of the European People’s Party, although last month it was suspended from the center-right family.

Salvini has held two meetings with senior Fidesz politicians in the past 10 days and is expected to visit Hungary in the coming weeks. However, Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, said Thursday that the party has not been invited to the Milan meeting.

One official in the European Parliament said Salvini and Meuthen’s ultimate aim is to create “a power bloc with political cohesion.”

“Salvini and Meuthen are doing a press conference together to show they are partners and can work together,” he said.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally, is not scheduled to be at the event in Milan. But she tweeted Thursday that she would meet Salvini in Paris on Friday for “talks on the upcoming European elections.”

An ECR spokesperson would not confirm if some of its Nordic members would be in Milan “because our group is not involved in the preparation of the meeting.” There are three Nordic parties in the ECR — the Danish People’s Party, Sweden Democrats and Finns Party.

On Wednesday, the Italian newspaper La Stampa reported that Salvini will make a plea in Milan to “all those who want to turn Europe over.” He will “underline the common Christian roots, defend national identity, the supremacy of the Italian constitution over laws and European directives,” and also “counteract the domination of France and Germany.”

Silvia Sciorilli-Borrelli and Lili Bayer contributed reporting.

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