Salvini Hits Back Against Leftist Criticism Over Meeting with Orban

Salvini
ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images

Italian populist Senator Matteo Salvini has hit back against criticism from Italian leftists over his recent meeting with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Member of the Italian Democratic Party (PD) attacked Salvini over the meeting, accusing him of doing a “U-turn” on Prime Minister Mario Draghi, whose pro-European Union government Salvini currently supports.

Enrico Letta, a former Prime Minister of Italy and secretary of the PD, stated that Salvini’s move was akin to a football fan put on the shirt of a rival club, claiming Salvini was not credible, newspaper Il Giornale reports.

“Salvini’s meeting with Orbán is very serious. Not only because they are anti-European but also for Italy because those two countries are enemies of the national interest. If it had been for Orbán the money for recovery would never have come,” former PD minister Peppe Provenzano alleged.

Andrea Orlando, the current Minister of Labour, also went on the attack, questioning what Salvini would do “when Orbán and Morawiecki oppose the proposals of the Draghi government in Europe.”

Salvini hit back at the criticism, saying that both Poland and Hungary had a “long friendship and rich trade with Italy,” and that if the PD was full of anti-Salvini activists “it is their problem.”

During their meeting in Budapest, Salvini, Orbán and Morawiecki announced they had formed a new alliance, with Prime Minister Orbán announcing the new group had planned further meetings in May.

“We are going to launch a new platform, an organisation, a process which will give those citizens who believe in a traditional Europe the representation that they deserve,” Orbán said.

Prior to the meeting, Salvini had floated the idea of unifying the two largest populist and conservative European Parliamentary groups, which would make a new group the second-largest in the European Parliament.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

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