ANGELA MERKEL is not the only head of a European government with a disruptive interior minister. Since entering the Italian cabinet on June 1st Matteo Salvini has managed for different reasons to annoy the governments of Tunisia, Malta, France and Spain. And he can scarcely have endeared himself to Mrs Merkel by openly making common cause with his German counterpart, Horst Seehofer. On June 18th Mr Salvini even picked a fight with Cambodia. In the latest of several excursions outside his ministerial bailiwick, Mr Salvini, who is also a deputy prime minister and leader of the hard-right Northern League, threatened to ban ships carrying Cambodian rice from docking in Italian ports. He claimed the rice, which is exempt from EU tariffs, was competing unfairly with Italian produce.
With his bull-in-a-china-shop approach Mr Salvini has dominated the political agenda from the start, even though his party is the junior partner in a coalition with the...Continue reading
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