‘Little Mussolinis’ are taking over Europe, says bloc official

EUROPE is being taken over by populist leaders who resemble “little Mussolinis”, a senior EU figure said yesterday, prompting fury from Italy.

Pierre Moscovici, a European economic affairs commissioner and French politician, likened the current political climate to the rise of Fascism and Nazism and said he was concerned about the rise of populist parties in the lead-up to European Parliament elections next year.

“There’s a climate very similar to that of the Thirties,” he told a press conference in Paris. “Certainly we should not exaggerate, clearly there’s no Hitler, maybe little Mussolinis [instead].”

Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s deputy prime minister, said “The attitude from some European commissioners is unacceptable, really intolerable. They dare to say that in Italy there are many little Mussolinis? That should not be permitted,” Mr Di Maio, the head of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, said.

“This shows how these people are totally divorced from reality. Our government has the strongest popular support of any in Europe yet this is how we are treated by European commissioners, who within six to eight months will probably no longer have jobs.”

Gabriele Lanzi, a Five Star senator, said Mr Moscovici’s comments were “shameful”.

The coalition government, an uneasy alliance between Five Star and the hard-right, anti-immigration League party, has a fractious relationship with the EU. Both parties have flirted with the idea of abandoning the euro as Italy’s currency.