Italy’s far-right League holds conference in buoyant mood
ROME: Italy’s far-right League will begin its annual conference with party head and hardline Interior Minister Matteo Salvini in triumphant mood after declaring the country’s ports closed to NGO migrant ships.
Salvini, attending his fifth party conference in the northern port of Pontida, said the League goes into its annual meeting ‘stronger and more organised than ever’.
Around 50,000 people from around Italy are expected to attend the event. Salvini, 45, who is codeputy prime minister as well as interior minister, has thrived as the migrant issue has become central to the European agenda.
He announced that Italian ports would be closed ‘all summer’ to NGO ships which rescue migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe.
“The NGOs will only see Italy on a postcard,” Salvini quipped.
Anti-immigration hardliners accuse NGO rescue boats of exacerbating the situation in the Mediterranean, where migrants try to cross the sea on rickety boats.
“It’s the League’s moment,” the Corriere della Sera daily opined.
The party’s strength “depends above all on the continuity of Matteo Salvini’s communication strategy in relation to the electoral campaign, a strategy based on a precise choice of sensitive topics in Europe, and also on his aggressive stance towards political leaders,” in particular President Emmanuel Macron of neighbouring France, the paper said.