Category Archives: Matteo Salvini

Steve Bannon ‘told Italy’s populist leader: Pope Francis is the enemy’

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Trump’s ex-strategist advised Matteo Salvini ‘to target pontiff’s stance on plight of refugees’

Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon advised Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini to attack the pope over the issue of migration, according to sources close to the Italian far right.

During a meeting in Washington in April 2016, Bannon – who would within a few months take up his role as head of Trump’s presidential campaign – suggested the leader of Italy’s anti-immigration League party should start openly targeting Pope Francis, who has made the plight of refugees a cornerstone of his papacy.

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Fears grow over migrant rescue boat stranded for a week

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Vessel barred from entering Italy or Malta since picking up dozens of refugees on 3 April

Concerns are rising for the wellbeing of 64 people stranded on a migrant rescue vessel in the Mediterranean for a week because neither Italy nor Malta will allow the boat to dock.

The migrants and refugees were rescued from a dinghy off Libya on 3 April by a rescue boat operated by the German NGO Sea-Eye and named Alan Kurdi after the Syrian boy who drowned in 2015.

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Populists are whipping up a storm as Europe faces lurch to the right

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Nationalist groups across the continent are stoking anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiment to win seats in next month’s EU elections

The battle for Europe is coming to a head – but, surprise, surprise, the main focus is not Brexit. Across the continent, far-right populist and nationalist parties are mobilising ahead of next month’s EU parliamentary elections. Polls show their support growing. For Europe’s newly energised hard right, Brexit is both a spur and a sideshow.

Whipping up anti-immigrant, Islamophobic and anti-semitic sentiment, and exploiting public anger over austerity and the perceived arrogance of the Brussels political class, the populists aim to reassert the pre-eminence of national identity, narrowly defined, and halt the European project in its integrationist tracks.

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Italy may scrap vaccine certificates for young children

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Move by Five Star and League senators follows intervention by Matteo Salvini

Italy may scrap its requirement for parents to provide proof that their children have been vaccinated before they start nursery.

The senate’s health committee is expected to pass an amendment dropping the obligation next week, sparking further controversy over the populist coalition government’s ambiguous vaccine policy. The measure would then be put to parliament.

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City of love? Christian right congress in Verona divides Italy

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Opponents says League-backed event symptomatic of politics of extremism going national

Antonio Gardoni had petrol thrown in his face when he opened the door of the home he shares in Verona with his husband after being woken up in the middle of the night by noise from outside. The assailants slashed the tyres of the couple’s car and daubed a swastika on the wall alongside the message: “We’ll put you all in the gas chambers”.

Gardoni escaped serious injury but is looking on with trepidation as Verona, better known around the world as the “city of love”, plays host to a lineup of anti-LGBT, anti-feminist and anti-abortion activists whose self-declared goal is to restore the “natural family order”.

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Italian authorities order seizure of migrant rescue ship

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Volunteers rescued about 50 people off Libya on Tuesday in defiance of government order

Italian authorities have ordered the seizure of a charity rescue ship after it defied the government’s order not to bring refugees and migrants to Italy.

On Tuesday, volunteers onboard the Mare Jonio rescued about 50 people from a rubber boat off the coast of Libya, prompting Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, to say he was ready to stop private vessels “once and for all” from bringing rescued people to Italy.

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Salvini crackdown: bulldozers demolish Italian camp housing 1,500 refugees

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San Ferdinando shanty town cleared in first major eviction after launch of hardline immigration measures

More than 1,500 people are being ousted from the refugee camp at San Ferdinando, in southern Italy, in the largest eviction since Italy’s rightwing populist government’s immigration measures kicked in.

On Wednesday morning, almost 1,000 paramilitary police officers surrounded the 400 shacks where the migrants have lived since the camp was established in 2010, near Gioia Tauro, in Calabria. As people were ushered out clutching their few possessions, bulldozers demolished the shanty town of cardboard and wood huts in a matter of hours.

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Italy’s centre-left votes to elect new leader for Democratic party

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President of Lazio, Nicola Zingaretti, is tipped to win, but needs 50% of the vote

Voters took to the polls on Sunday to elect a new leader to represent Italy’s centre-left Democratic party, as the embattled group strives to re-establish itself as a credible force against the country’s rightwing populist government.

The vote is seen as a litmus test for the strength of the party and comes a year after its administration was ousted in an embarrassing defeat in general elections that led eventually to the formation of a coalition government between the far-right League and anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S).

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Italy’s intelligence agency warns of rise in racist attacks

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Agency says increase in attacks on migrants is likely before European elections in May

Italy’s intelligence agency has warned in a briefing to the Italian parliament that attacks on migrants and minorities could rise in the run-up to May’s European elections.

Racially motivated attacks have seen a sharp increase in Italy and tripled between 2017 and 2018, when the far-right League entered government in coalition with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.

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Italian MPs demand answers over claims Salvini’s League sought Kremlin funding

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Salvini spokesman says claims of Moscow meeting to fund the party are ‘fantasies’

Italian opposition politicians have demanded an urgent explanation from the government after allegations surfaced accusing Matteo Salvini’s far-right League party of links to the Kremlin.

According to claims made in L’Espresso magazine, an arrangement was struck to sell 3m tonnes of diesel fuel to an Italian oil company by Russian representatives close to the government of Vladmir Putin, diverting profits to the League.

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Italian senate group votes to block criminal case against Salvini

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Rest of senate must choose whether to ratify decision over kidnapping charges

An Italian parliamentary committee has voted to block a criminal case against Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister and interior minister, for refusing to allow migrants to disembark from a rescue ship.

Prosecutors in Catania, Sicily, need the backing of parliament to continue investigations against Salvini, who also leads the far-right League party, for alleged abuse of office and kidnapping.

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Rome’s war of words with President Macron may prove self-defeating

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The French ambassador’s recall ought to remind Italy’s populist leaders that they need some friends in Europe

Diplomatic etiquette would normally classify the recall of an ambassador for “consultations” as a middle-order symbol of displeasure. During the cold war, the summoning, or withdrawal, of an ambassador was mundane. More recently, Hungary pulled its ambassador from the Netherlands in 2017, in response to criticism by the outgoing Dutch ambassador in Hungary.

Related: France recalls Rome envoy over worst verbal onslaught 'since the war'

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France recalls Rome envoy over worst verbal onslaught ‘since the war’

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Move comes after Italian deputy PM met leaders of the anti-Macron gilets jaunes

Paris has taken the extraordinary step of recalling its ambassador from Rome, in the worst crisis between the two neighbouring countries since the second world war.

France blamed what it called called baseless verbal attacks from Italy’s political leaders, which it said were “without precedent since world war two”.

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Leonardo da Vinci dragged into Salvini’s spat with Macron

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Louvre blockbuster marking 500 years since artist’s death may end up a casualty

He was a Renaissance master – painter, scientist, engineer and inventor – who was hailed as one of the greatest artists who ever lived.

But as Europe stages a year-long frenzy of events to mark 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci’s death, Italy and France are engaged in a diplomatic tussle over him that threatens a blockbuster exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.

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Court in Italy rules Matteo Salvini should be tried for kidnapping

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Leader of far-right party under investigation after preventing 177 migrants from disembarking in Italy

Italy’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, Matteo Salvini, is one step away from facing trial after a surprise court ruling determined that he be tried for kidnapping.

In August, prosecutors in Agrigento, Sicily, placed Salvini, who is leader of the far-right party the League, under investigation for the alleged kidnapping and detention of 177 migrants whom he prevented from disembarking the Italian coastguard ship Ubaldo Diciotti.

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Cesare Battisti arrest highlights rightwing alliance of Italy and Brazil

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Matteo Salvini celebrates likely extradition of leftwing militant by Jair Bolsonaro

Cesare Battisti, a former leftwing guerrilla fighter wanted by the Italian authorities over four murders in the late 1970s, has been arrested in Bolivia and has been extradited to Italy.

The prime minister of Italy, Giuseppe Conte, said a government aircraft was on its way to bring Battisti, 63, back to Rome and Brazilian officials later confirmed his extradition. Conte praised the Bolivian and Brazilian authorities for the overnight capture of Battisti, who has been on the run for almost four decades, in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and said he would begin his life sentences as soon as he lands on Italian soil.

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Will the radical right consolidate power in the heart of the EU this year? | Cas Mudde

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May’s European elections offer a chance for the resurgent far right to collaborate, consolidate – and bend the EU to its will

Every five years, millions of Europeans across the continent go to the polls to elect their national members of the European parliament. This May we’ll be doing so again, in what could be a watershed election for rightwing populists.

Although radical right parties won pretty big in the past two European elections, their influence within the various umbrella groups that make up the European parliament’s power blocs remained limited. This year, most rightwing populist parties may make only modest seat gains. But they also have the opportunity to create, for the first time, a serious rival to the centrist political groups that until now have dominated the EU’s governing body.

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