French President Emmanuel Macron fired back at Italy’s two deputy prime ministers, ridiculing their latest criticisms of his leadership as “insignificant”. Speaking during a trip to Egypt, the French leader said that Italians “deserve other better leaders” than Matteo Salving and Luigi Di Maio. Last week, France and Italy became embroiled in a tense row after Mr Di Maio of the populist, anti-establishment 5-Star movement, charged France with impoverishing Africa.
Joining the attack, Mr Salvini, from the right-wing Lega, mocked Mr Macron as a “terrible president” before urging French voters to show their disapproval at the European elections in May.
In a Facebook video, the Italian interior minister said: “I am close, with all my heart and all my work, to the French people, the millions of men and women who live in France with a very bad government and a very bad president.”
France’s foreign minister comparing the war of words to a “stupidity contest”.
The foreign ministry also summoned Italy’s ambassador in the wake of the comments.
Mr Macron has now waded into the row, claiming that his only worthy counterpart was Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
The French leader told reporters in Cairo: “The Italian people are our friends and deserve leaders who live up to their history.”
He sarcastically wished Italy’s coalition “good luck” in agitating against him and France.
Mr Macron added: “All of this has frankly no importance.”
He is expected to meet with Giuseppe Conte at a summit of southern EU countries in Cyprus on Tuesday afternoon.
Mr Di Maio responded in an interview on Sunday, telling Italian TV: “Macron says that Salvini and I are not up to it.
“Let the Italian people decide about that.”
Mr Salvini has been courting anti-Macron sentiment across Europe in a bid to organise a right-wing populist challenge to liberal, pro-EU centrists at the May European Parliament elections.
Guglielmo Picchi, an undersecretary at the Italian Foreign Ministry and former Barclays investment banker, claimed that Mr Salvini would soon replace Angela Merkel as Europe’s leader.
He said: “Just as Merkel was Europe’s guide for many years, now it will be Salvini. Everyone will have to talk to Salvini. His leadership will no longer be just Italian, but European too.”