Matteo Salvini's Outsized Role In Italy And Europe

Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right Lega (League) party, is Italy's interior minister; Giuseppe Conte, from the populist Five Star Movement, is the country's prime minister. But given the way Salvini's dominated the national and international political conversation since Italy's election back in March, one could be forgiven for thinking those roles were reversed.

Part of Salvini's outsized influence and role comes, as this Economist article notes, from the fact that migration is front and center in Europe: refugee issues and immigration were, of course, Salvini's key issues in the Italian election campaign. Salvini transformed the Lega, once a regional power largely focused on greater autonomy for Italy's prosperous north, into a national force by following the anti-immigration, Euroskeptic playbook of other far-right parties across the Continent.

More than even Five Star leader Luigi di Maio and certainly more than Conte, Salvini is the person to watch in Italy: even since the election, polls show his Lega has seen a significant increase in support. As Europe works to defuse a crisis over migration in the coming weeks, he will continue to play an equally large role in the discussion.