“Whatever happens, I hope Italians will soon realise that there is only one solution: Italy must leave the EU,” Mr Philippot, a die-hard eurosceptic and leader of the far-right The Patriots movement, said on Twitter. Mr Philippot quit France’s far-right Rassemblement national (RN) party after its leader, Marine Le Pen, played down her anti-EU rhetoric and dropped plans for a Frexit after losing the 2017 presidential race to Emmanuel Macron, a staunch europhile.
His comments came after the leader of Italy’s ruling far-right League party, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, pulled the plug on the government on Thursday, plunging the euro zone’s third-largest economy into deep political turmoil.
Mr Salvini declared the populist government to be unworkable after months of public feuding between the League and its coalition partner, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, and said the only way forward was to hold fresh elections.
Mr Salvini has accused 5-Star of holding up the key policies the country needs to boost its sluggish economy.
“We need to unblock, to build, to work — enough is enough, we must go to elections,” he told reporters in Pescara, on the Adriatic coast.
Tensions erupted on Wednesday after 5-Star and the League voted against each other in parliament over the future of a project for a high-speed train link with France.
The League says the project will create jobs, while 5-Star argues it is a waste of money.
Mr Salvini said in a statement he had told Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who belongs to neither coalition party, that the alliance with 5-Star had collapsed after barely a year in power and that “we should quickly give the choice back to the voters”.
Five-Star has more parliamentary seats than the League, but Mr Salvini’s party now has twice as much voter support, according to opinion polls.
READ MORE: Brexit gamble: Boris Johnson could call shock snap general election
Five-Star Leader Luigi Di Maio said his party did not fear a snap election.
“We are ready, we don’t care in the least about occupying government posts and we never have,” he said in a statement.
He accused Mr Salvini of “taking the country for a ride” and said Italians would resent him for it.
The two parties were bitter rivals ahead of an inconclusive election in March 2018, before forming an unlikely alliance which has often clashed with the EU, namely over Rome’s massive public debt and hostile stance towards Brussels.
Mr Salvini’s fiercely eurosceptic League has long blamed the EU for Italy’s many economic woes.