Italy seeks Poland’s support for ‘renaissance’
WARSAW: Italy and Poland should join forces to reshape Europe, Italy’s farright Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said on a visit to Warsaw to drum up support for a eurosceptic alliance to contest May elections to the European Parliament.
The eurosceptic governments in Rome and Warsaw are both keen to repatriate some EU powers from Brussels to national capitals and hope likeminded parties will do well in the May elections, which will follow the UK’s scheduled Brexit from the bloc in March.
‘‘Poland and Italy will be part of the new spring of Europe, the renaissance of European values,’’ he told a press conference with Poland’s Interior Minister Joachim Brudzinski.
Salvini’s visit to Warsaw was initiated by Brudzinski, who said the two had discussed migration and EU border security.
Salvini has repeatedly railed against the EU and says the May elections are vital for creating a ‘‘reformist’’ bloc that can overhaul Brussels institutions from within.
A Japan’s Shinzo Abe was expected overnight to urge British Prime Minister Theresa May to do everything she can to avoid a disorderly Brexit that some of Japan’s leading companies have warned could be a disaster.
Japanese firms have spent more than £46 billion ($NZ86.5 billion) investing in Britain, encouraged by British governments promising a businessfriendly base from which to trade across Europe.
Abe said he wanted to avoid a nodeal Brexit and ‘‘see the influence of Brexit to the global economy minimised.’’
UK business minister Greg Clark has said that a nodeal Brexit would be a disaster and partners such as Japan needed assurance that it would be avoided.