Italy’s far-right interior minister urges Europe-wide alliance against refugees

Speaking at the annual gathering of his far-right League Party north of Milan on Sunday, Salvini spoke of a united Europe against “mass immigration.”

“I am thinking about a League of the Leagues of Europe, bringing together all the free and sovereign movements that want to defend their people and their borders,” he said.

“To win we had to unite Italy, now we will have to unite Europe,” Salvini said, referring to his party’s alliance with other far-right European groups.

He told some 50,000 people, who attended the rally from around Italy, that he seeks to turn next year’s European Parliament elections into a referendum on “a Europe without borders ... and a Europe that protects its citizens.”

The interior minister has taken a tough stance on refugees since taking office on June 1. The one-month-old coalition government in Italy has been cracking down on humanitarian groups that rescue refugees in the Mediterranean Sea and then ferry the asylum-seekers to the country’s ports.

On Friday, Salvini declared that the country’s ports would be closed “all summer” to charity ships which rescue refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean from Africa to the European Union.

“The NGOs will only see Italy on a postcard,” he said. “The decision to open or close ports is taken by the interior minister.”

In addition to closing the country’s ports, Salvini had formerly pledged to speed up refugee deportations.

He also hailed an agreement reached by European Union leaders in Brussels on Friday to share out the refugees arriving in the continent. Rights groups, however, criticize the agreement as a potential threat to human rights.

Over the past five years, more than 600,000 refugees have reached Italy by risking their lives in the sea. Some 500,000 of them are still staying in the country.

According to the United Nations figures, at least 500 people have died this year as they were trying to cross the central Mediterranean. Some 2,853 also lost their lives last year.

Salvini’s comments come amid a rift among European Union member states over how to implement the newly-reached deal on refugees.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer rejected the agreement, fueling a crisis that threatens to bring down her governing coalition.

Seehofer, Salvini and Austria’s Interior Minister Herbert Kickl formed in June an “axis of the willing” to combat illegal immigration.