Salvini Plans Rally to Unite Europe’s Far-Right Ahead of Vote

By staff, Agencies

Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said on Friday he would host a major rally of European nationalist and far-right parties to promote a shared political vision ahead of May’s EU parliamentary elections.

Salvini leads the ruling League party and hopes to put together a bloc of like-minded, anti-immigration parties in the European parliament to challenge the traditionally predominant and mainstream center-left and center-right groups.

However he has so far struggled to create a broad, sovereigntist front in the 28-nation European Union, with a matrix of conflicting national interests hindering his progress.

With time running out, he announced this week he would kick off his campaign for the May 26 vote in Milan on Monday with representatives of just three, relatively small far-right European parties.

But speaking after talks with his longtime French ally Marine Le Pen, Salvini told reporters he planned a much more ambitious election rally next month.

“We’re preparing a major event for the Europe of the next 30 years in May in Italy, where we’ll invite all the European movements that are alternatives to the rule of the Socialists and the European People’s Party of recent years,” Salvini said, referring to the EU’s big leftist and conservative groups.

“It will be the first time an event drawing together at least 15 or 20 European countries will take place in Italy,” he told reporters in Paris.

Salvini did not say what other parties had signed up to the initiative, which the League hopes to hold in Rome’s ancient chariot-racing stadium Circus Maximus.