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France Recalls Ambassador to Italy After Minister Meets ‘Yellow Vest’ Protesters France Recalls Ambassador to Italy, Revealing Strains at Europe’s Core
(about 4 hours later)
It has happened rarely between European Union allies, and not between France and Italy since the start of World War II. But on Thursday, after months of barbed commentary from Italian leaders, the French government said it had had enough: It recalled its ambassador from Rome. PARIS — It has happened rarely between European Union allies, and not between France and Italy since World War II. But on Thursday, after months of barbed commentary from Italian leaders, the French government said it had had enough: It recalled its ambassador from Rome.
“This is without precedent since 1940, when Mussolini declared war,” said Marc Lazar, a leading specialist of Franco-Italian relations who teaches at universities in Paris and Rome. “This is very, very harsh. There’s never been anything comparable.’’ “This is without precedent since 1940, when Mussolini declared war,” said Marc Lazar, a specialist in Franco-Italian relations who teaches at universities in Paris and Rome. “This is very, very harsh. There’s never been anything comparable.’’
The grave step not only demonstrated the breakdown of relations between France and Italy, two founding members of the European Union. It also reflected the mounting strains at Europe’s core, brought on by populists who are now overreaching in their attempts to denigrate the bloc and forge anti-European alliances across borders. The protest not only demonstrated the breakdown of relations between France and Italy, founding members of the European Union. It also reflected the mounting strains at Europe’s core brought on by populists seeking to denigrate the bloc and forge anti-European alliances across borders, a clash that may play out even more bitterly in European Parliament elections in May.
The list of insults, particularly on the Italian side, has grown long, and progressively more outrageous as the Italian populist leaders try to score political points at home by attacking backers of the vision of a united Europe — the French president, Emmanuel Macron, first among them. But now that the populists run the Italian government, Europe’s divided politics have been elevated to the level of diplomatic rancor.
The list of insults, particularly on the Italian side, has grown long and progressively more outrageous as the Italian populist leaders try to score political points at home on issues like migration by attacking backers of the vision of a united Europe — the French president, Emmanuel Macron, first among them.
But the final straw appears to have come on Tuesday, when Italy’s deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, the political leader of the populist Five Star Movement, met in France with a leader of the Yellow Vest protesters who have besieged Mr. Macron’s government with violent protests.But the final straw appears to have come on Tuesday, when Italy’s deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, the political leader of the populist Five Star Movement, met in France with a leader of the Yellow Vest protesters who have besieged Mr. Macron’s government with violent protests.
Mr. Di Maio, the political leader of the Five Star Movement, and Alessandro Di Battista, a rabble rouser who many consider the party’s leader-in-waiting, posted a picture on their social media pages of a meeting near Paris with Christophe Chalencon, an organizer of the Yellow Vest movement from the south of France who has called for civil war. The widening dispute has no doubt had its comic-opera overtones, with its outlandish insults from the Italians — the far-right leader and interior minister, Matteo Salvini, recently said France should get rid of its “very bad president” — and the injured dignity of the French. “Outrageous declarations” had been aimed at France by Italy, the French Foreign Ministry huffed on Thursday.
“This is the picture of a beautiful meeting, first of many to come, where we talked about our countries, social rights, the environment and direct democracy,’’ Mr. Di Maio said in the post. ‘‘The wind of change has crossed the Alps. I am repeating. The wind of change has crossed the Alps.” But beneath the provocation and posturing there is a serious undercurrent, recognized by both sides: a battle for Europe’s leadership between the nationalist forces represented by Mr. Salvini and the self-proclaimed progressive spirit of Mr. Macron, who last summer denounced the populist “leprosy” rising in Europe.
The French, in a statement from the foreign ministry, denounced the meeting as “an additional and unacceptable provocation’’ that “violated the respect that is owed to the democratic choices made by an allied and friendly nation.” “It’s a confrontation between two very different conceptions of Europe,” Mr. Lazar said.
The widening dispute no doubt has had comic-opera overtones, with its outlandish insults from the Italians — France should get rid of its “very bad president,” the Italian far-right leader and interior minister Matteo Salvini said recently — and its injured dignity on the French side. “Outrageous declarations” had been aimed at France by Italy, the French foreign ministry huffed on Thursday. Mr. Macron’s palpable disdain for the Italian populists, who had once tried to court the French president before training their sights on him, has only multiplied Italian fury at the French government.
But beneath the provocation and posturing there is a serious undercurrent, recognized by both sides: a battle for Europe’s leadership between the forces represented by the Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini, and the more open, self-proclaimed “progressive” spirit of Mr. Macron, who last summer denounced the populist “leprosy” rising in Europe, in a barb deliberately aimed at Mr. Salvini. Migration, which brought the Italian populists to power, is at the heart of the dispute.
“It’s a confrontation between two very different conceptions of Europe,” said Mr. Lazar — the ultranationalist, populist conception of Mr. Salvini, and Mr. Macron’s constant proselytizing for a more unified, transnational Europe. On Thursday, Mr. Salvini responded to the French ambassador’s recall with a series of complaints, including France’s closing of its border to stop illegal migrants passing through Italy.
Mr. Macron’s palpable disdain for the Italian populists has only multiplied Italian fury at the French government. ‘‘Stop with pushbacks at the borders,’’ said Mr. Salvini, who leads the anti-immigrant League party, the Italian government’s coalition partner. ‘‘There have been about 60,000 since 2017, and those include children and women abandoned in the forest.’’
French officials say the number is closer to 50,000. They noted that the border patrols were put in place in November 2015, after the terrorist attacks in Paris, and that under European Union agreements illegal migrants should be brought back to the country where they were first registered.
“The policy disagreements between Italy and France were present even during the previous government, especially on immigration, but it never reached this level,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based think-tank Institute of International Affairs, said in a phone interview. “It greatly exacerbated in the last three months.”
“This is also cast against the broader E.U. story, of the big dividing line between national sovereigntists and European sovereigntists,” she said.
The dispute between the two countries came to a boil last summer over the migrant issue. The Italians, having borne the brunt of the migrant wave since 2015, were outraged last year when Mr. Macron denounced the new Italian government for failing to take in hundreds of migrants aboard the Aquarius humanitarian rescue boat.
The Italian prime minister’s office reacted with fury, saying it could not “accept hypocritical lessons from a country that, on migration, has always preferred to turn its back on its partners.” And it was true that France has made a regular practice of blocking migrants attempting to cross the Italian border.
“The Italians have been justified — a lot of Italians feel that France’s behavior, with its grand speeches but refusal to welcome migrants, is unacceptable,” Mr. Lazar said.
The French said they considered the attacks to be Mr. Salvini’s way of elevating himself in Europe, by essentially punching above his weight. But soon others joined in.
Late last year, the country’s deputy culture minister, Lucia Borgonzoni, a member of Mr. Salvini’s party, took the nationalist, French-bashing cause into the previously neutral terrain of culture, voicing her opposition to Italian museums sending Leonardo masterpieces for a major Louvre retrospective.
And in January, after the Yellow Vest movement exploded, Mr. Di Maio publicly egged them on in a post on his party’s blog.
“Yellow vests, do not give up! We are following your battle from Italy since the day you came about coloring in yellow the streets of Paris and other French cities,” he wrote. “In France, like in Italy, politics is deaf to the citizens’ needs who have been kept out of the most important decisions that involve the people.”
Mr. Di Maio compared the Yellow Vest movement — which sprang from opposition to fuel tax increases and grew to encompass protests over economic conditions — to his own political movement, and offered it the use of his party’s web platform.
But his meeting on Tuesday was apparently a step too far.
Mr. Di Maio and Alessandro Di Battista, whom many consider the party’s leader-in-waiting, posted a picture on their social media pages of a meeting near Paris with Christophe Chalencon, an organizer of the Yellow Vest movement from the south of France who has called for civil war.
“This is the picture of a beautiful meeting, first of many to come, where we talked about our countries, social rights, the environment and direct democracy,” Mr. Di Maio said in the post. “The wind of change has crossed the Alps.”
The French, in a statement from the Foreign Ministry, denounced the meeting as “an additional and unacceptable provocation” that “violated the respect that is owed to the democratic choices made by an allied and friendly nation.”
The French have considered support for the Yellow Vests a direct attack on their government in that it promoted an often-violent street opposition movement threatening the country’s stability.
“If you think about it, for a deputy prime minister of a country to go to a Paris suburb to meet a guy whose movement is considered criminal and has broken windows setting Paris on fire, it’s a dramatically stupid movement,” Ms. Tocci said.
The Italian populists, French officials said, were talented at capturing the rancor of their country for political benefit, but now they were trying to capitalize on France’s unrest for their own benefit, just as they had previously targeted bureaucrats in Brussels and leaders in Berlin.
Some of the Italian attacks have been considered simply bizarre by the French. Mr. Di Maio recently tried to cast the French as a root cause for the migration issue, alleging that they systematically impoverished their former colonies by printing and backing their common currency, the C.F.A. franc.
‘‘If Europe wants to have a bit of courage, it needs to face the issue of Africa’s decolonization,’’ he said. ‘‘I am tired of speaking of the consequences of immigration. I want to start discussing the causes.”
He added, “The European Union should sanction France and all those European countries that are impoverishing Africa.”
French officials said the currency accusation was a pure invention, and pointed out that many of the countries from which migrants to Italy often came, such as Eritrea or Somalia, were in fact former Italian colonies and the site of Italian atrocities.
On Jan. 22, the French government summoned Italy’s ambassador to France for an “explanation.” Back in Italy, Mr. Salvini offered his own explanation, calling Mr. Macron “a terrible president of the Republic.”
He added, “Macron talks a lot but does little,” and “He preaches about generosity and solidarity and then pushes back thousands of migrants at the Italian border in Ventimiglia and Piedmont.”
Referring to the European Parliament elections in May, he said, “I hope the French will choose someone more representative, more serious and concrete like Marine Le Pen.”
On Jan. 27, Mr. Salvini replied to Mr. Macron’s suggestion that the Italian populists were irrelevant by posting a picture of Mr. Macron together with the former Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, whom the populist forces had vanquished.