Italian deputy PM Salvini lays out EU reform plan
Populist leader of League party calls for budget rewrite and reform of banking and deficit rules
Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini has laid out his three-point plan to change the EU from within, ahead of a rally in Milan on Saturday of far-right and nationalist parties intended as a show of strength among Eurosceptic forces before this months’ European elections.
Mr Salvini, leader of Italy’s League party, said his first aim if he gained sufficient influence in the upcoming EU vote was to rewrite the EU’s seven-year budget, which he said was “unacceptable” in its present form.
He also said he would change EU banking rules, which he accused of putting Europe’s “entire banking system at risk”. He said he also wanted to change the EU’s “fiscal and economic constraints” and return to “pre-Maastricht rules”, referring to requirements that EU nations stick to prescribed limits on public debt and deficits.
Italy has recently been at loggerheads with the European Commission over its budget plans, which are expected to break EU rules by a wide margin next year.
Asked if he saw himself as the leader of the far-right in Europe, Mr Salvini said: “In Italy they use terms sovereigntist and populist in a pejorative way but I am extremely proud to be considered in this way, in the original meaning of the word. Far-right, I do not see myself in that term, but it is a vision of Europe that is different and legitimate.”
Armoured vehicles were already blocking entrances to Milan’s Piazza del Duomo on Friday where a huge stage on one side of the city’s gothic cathedral has been set up for Saturday’s rally.
Mr Salvini said he would be joined by representatives of populist parties from 11 EU countries, including France’s FN and the Alternative for Germany (AfD).