The League of Salvini : from a Europe of Regions to a Europe of Nations

The electoral rise of Salvini’s League is one of the novelties on the Italian political scene. In 2020, Salvini’s party has gone ahead with its bid for hegemony in government and the centre-right coalition, although having to face the rise of a potential right-wing competitor, Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia. The chapter sets out to explore the reasons behind the Salvini League’s attainment of national, and on some occasions even international, prominence; what resources it deployed to tackle and surmount the critical phase in the first period; and the prospects and limitations it faces in Italy’s present socio-political and economic predicament. Formally, the Northern League was founded in 1991, though its roots were inextricably planted in the independence and autonomy movements arising in the 1960s–1980s in several northern Italian regions, especially around the Liga Veneta. Much like Euroscepticism, sovereignism has served as a tool to turn the League into a catch-all party on the Italian political scene.