France recalls envoy from Italy, revealing strains at core of EU

It has happened rarely between European Union allies, and not between France and Italy since World War II. But on Thursday, after months of barbed commentary from Italian leaders, the French government said it had had enough: It recalled its ambassador from Rome.

“This is without precedent since 1940, when Mussolini declared war,” said Marc Lazar, a specialist in Franco-Italian relations who teaches at universities in Paris and Rome. “This is very, very harsh. There’s never been anything comparable.’’

The protest not only demonstrated the breakdown of relations between France and Italy, founding members of the EU. It also reflected the mounting strains at Europe’s core brought on by populists seeking to denigrate the bloc and forge antiEuropean alliances across borders, a clash that may play out even more bitterly in European Parliament elections in May.

The list of insults, particularly on the Italian side, has grown long and progressively more outrageous as the Italian populist leaders try to score political points at home on issues like migration by attacking backers of the vision of a united Europe — the French president, Emmanuel Macron, first among them.

But the final straw appears to have come Tuesday, when Italy’s deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, the political leader of the populist Five Star Movement, met in France with a leader of the Yellow Vest protesters who have besieged Macron’s government with violent protests.

The widening dispute has no doubt had its comicopera overtones, with its outlandish insults from the Italians — the far-right leader and interior minister, Matteo Salvini, recently said France should get rid of its “very bad president” — and the injured dignity of the French.

But beneath the provocation and posturing there is a serious undercurrent, recognized by both sides: a battle for Europe’s leadership between the nationalist forces represented by Salvini and the self-proclaimed progressive spirit of Macron, who last summer denounced the populist “leprosy” rising in Europe.

“It’s a confrontation between two very different conceptions of Europe,” Lazar said.

Migration, which brought the Italian populists to power, is at the heart of the dispute. On Thursday, Salvini responded to the French ambassador’s recall with a series of complaints, including France’s closing of its border to stop migrants illegally passing through Italy.

“Stop with pushbacks at the borders,” said Salvini, who leads the anti-immigrant League party, the Italian government’s coalition partner. “There have been about 60,000 since 2017, and those include children and women abandoned in the forest.’’

French officials say the number is closer to 50,000. They noted that the border patrols were put in place in November 2015, after the terrorist attacks in Paris, and that under EU agreements unauthorized migrants should be brought back to the country where they were first registered.