The relationship between Italy and France has grown frosty since the far-right League and anti-establishment 5-Star movement won power last year and took aim at the French leader. The widespread anti-French sentiment in Italy is fuelled by Mr Salvini and his far-right League party, Mr Saviano told France’s Europe 1 radio. He said: “At the moment, anti-French sentiment is very strong in Italy, because we always need to point the finger at someone. “And [French President] Emmanuel Macron is being held responsible for all of the things that Mr Salvini is incapable of dealing with.”
Mr Saviano, a fierce and vocal critic of Mr Salvini, who is also interior minister, added that the French were being wrongly blamed for Italy’s social and economic woes.
He said: “[The French] are accused of dumping migrants on the border with Italy, of harbouring Italian terrorists, of colonising Africa and of fuelling Europe’s immigration crisis.”
Migrants, Mr Saviano continued, have been unfairly turned into “scapegoats” and are being blamed for Italy’s job crisis and sluggish economy.
He warned, in a reference to the Hungarian prime minister’s hardline rule and tough anti-migrant stance: “There is no such thing as a migrant invasion – despite what [the government] says on a daily basis. I think that Mr Salvini is undermining Italian democracy, by turning it into something that resembles Viktor Orban’s Hungary.
“The nationalist right is on the rise in Italy, and the situation is very complicated. My message to the French is this: ‘Look at Italy, because this is your future’. They too will one day elect a minister [like Mr Salvini].”
The relationship between Italy and France has had its ups and downs in recent months.
Ties between the traditionally close allies have grown increasingly tense since mid-2018, with Mr Salvini and his co-deputy premier Luigi Di Maio, throwing blistering jabs at Mr Macron and his centrist government over a host of inflammatory issues.
Earlier this year, Mr Di Maio, leader of the populist, anti-establishment Five Star Movement, accused Paris of stoking poverty in Africa and of generating mass migration to Europe.
Mr Salvini backed him up, accusing France of looking to extract wealth from its former African colonies rather than helping them develop their own economies.
Mr Salvini was quoted as saying in January: “France has no reason to get upset because it pushed away tens of thousands of migrants [at the French border], abandoning them there as though they were beasts. We won’t take any lessons on humanity from Mr Macron.”
France briefly recalled its ambassador to Rome in February in protest, with the foreign ministry denouncing the Italian government’s “repeated accusations, unfounded attacks and outlandish claims”.
While Mr Macron, a 41-year-old former economy minister, has repeatedly called for deeper European unity and integration, his Italian rivals have regularly criticised the Brussels bloc, saying it has lost touch with ordinary citizens and stripped national governments of their sovereignty.
Mr Macron, for his part, has urged EU states to shun populism and instead work together to resolve problems such as mass immigration and economic slowdowns.
“There are people who defend nationalism, who want to fight our Europe. Me, I will fight these people with force, because I think they will … make us lose 10 years, 20 years by dragging us back to [old] divisions,” he said in an interview with Italy’s state-owned television channel RAI.
But far-right, populist parties like Mr Salvini’s League have grown in strength across the continent and are expected to make major gains in the European parliamentary elections at the end of May.
The May vote is already shaping up to be a bitter contest between nationalists who want Brussels to hand back powers to EU states and liberals who want a stronger, more ambitious Europe.