Anti-migrant Euroskeptic
League leader and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has earned
the front cover of the latest Time magazine with a photo
captioned "the new face of Europe", calling him "Italy's
immigration czar who is leading the mission to undo the EU".
Inside, Time ran a long interview with Salvini, who is also
deputy premier.
The rightwing populist leader has spearheaded a tough new
stance on migrants since taking power in May, turning back NGO
rescue ships and vowing to deport hundreds of thousands of
migrants.
Salvini tells Time that "we are working to recover the
European spirit that has been betrayed by those who lead this
union".
The minister says "it is clear that I must change the
European dynamics".
Time's Rome correspondent Vivienne Walt speaks of Salvini as
"the most feared man in Europe", "the captain whose rocketing
rise over just six months has jolted Europe's establishment and
threatens to finally upturn a political system that has reeled
under a populist surge for the past three years".
Walt says: As Europe began dealing with an unprecedented
influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, Salvini
sensed an opportunity, broadening the League's message to
encompass a trenchant nationalism (and in the process dropping
the Northern from its name).
"He seized on Italians' frustrations over their debt-laden
economy, sluggish growth and a more than one-third youth
unemployment rate, and minted a new slogan with Trumpian echoes:
"Italians first."
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