Speaking on Nick Ferrari’s LBC show, Italian Senator Lucio Malan said the EU is to blame for the victory of anti-establishment populist parties at the Italian election on Sunday.
A member of Silvio Berlusconi’s party Forza Italia, Mr Malan was asked whether Italians feel that the European Union has let them down.
He replied: “Yes, certainly so. We feel that the European Union is very strong about some parameters, economic parameters.
“The EU is strong with somebody and very lenient with others and absent when it is up to save our borders.
“For instance, President Macron from France says beautiful words about solidarity but then at our frontier immigrants are trying to go to France but they are stopped in the mountains.
“There are people who put traps, like traps for animals, to catch them.
“Both us and the immigrants in Italy don’t feel much solidarity in the facts.”
Italian election campaigns on all sides were dominated by talks on immigration reforms.
More than 50 per cent of the Italian electorate voted in favour of populist anti-EU parties Five Star Movement and League.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, League leader Matteo Salvini renewed his promise to fight Brussels and to reform the EU’s core treaties.
The eurosceptic leader said: “With the Italian vote, European people have taken a step forward towards freedom from Brussels’ cages and constraints that have brought hunger, precariousness and insecurity to Europe.
“The Italian vote will give us the chance to rebuild a Europe founded on men and women and not on constraints, bureaucracy and choices made speculators on the back of other people.
“They won’t fool us anymore. In Italy, Italians will decide from now on.
“Not Berlin, not Paris, not Brussels.”
Silvio Berlusconi’s party Forza Italia only managed to reach 14 per cent of the vote.