page_title: Matteo Salvini
section_title: European Parliament and local leader
hierarchical_section_title: Matteo Salvini / Early political career / European Parliament and local leader
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Matteo Salvini parla durante la manifestazione dei Giovani Padani a Milano.
context_page_description: Matteo Salvini is an Italian politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of the Interior from 1 June 2018 to 5 September 2019. He has also been Federal Secretary of the Northern League since December 2013. He has been a Senator in the Italian Senate since March 2018. He previously served as a Member of the European Parliament for the constituency of North-West Italy from 2004 to 2018.
  He has been considered a hardline Eurosceptic politician, holding a starkly critical view of the European Union, especially of the euro and Islam. Salvini opposes illegal immigration into Italy and the EU as well as the EU's management of asylum seekers. He is also considered one of the main leaders of the populist wave which shook Europe during the 2010s and a member of the neo-nationalist movement, which has a rightist ideology that emphasizes de-globalization, nativist and protectionist stances.
  Salvini is nicknamed "The Captain" by his supporters.
context_section_description: Salvini was elected with 14,000 votes a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the North-West region in 2004 and participated in the European Parliament as a part of the Non-Inscrits. During the legislature he selected Franco Bossi, brother of the party's secretary Umberto, as his parliamentary assistant.
  In 2006 he lost his office as member of the European Parliament and was replaced by Gian Paolo Gobbo. Salvini was then re-elected city councilor in Milan, in the municipal election of that year, with over 3,000 votes. In the same year, he became deputy secretary of the Lombard League, along with Marco Reguzzoni, and the party leader in the city council.
  Salvini ran in the 2008 general election and was elected in the Chamber of Deputies for the constituency Lombardy 1. However he resigned on 13 July 2009, after being elected once again in the European Parliament in the June election. In the Parliament, he sat in the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group.
  On 2 June 2012, Salvini became the federal secretary of the Lombard League, defeating Cesarino Monti with 403 votes against 129. Following the election, on 12 October he decided to leave the office of group leader and city councilor after 19 years.   Salvini was later elected deputy in the 2013 general election, but he renounced his mandate on the first day of the legislature, and was replaced by Marco Rondini; Salvini maintained the position of MEP.
  After the 2014 European election, in which he was re-elected, he returned to the Non-Inscrits. In June 2015, he was part of the creation of a new group, the Europe of Nations and Freedom, which also included parties such as the French National Front and the Dutch Party for Freedom; he was also the vice-president of the Italian delegation.
  He sat on the European Parliament's Committee on Culture and Education, and was a substitute for the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and a member of the delegation to the EU-Chile Joint Parliamentary Committee. He stood down from the European Parliament in November 2006.
  After he was re-elected in 2009 as an MEP, he sat on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and was a member of the delegation for relations with India, and the delegation for relations with the Korean peninsula. He was a substitute on the Committee on International Trade and the delegation for relations with South Africa.
caption: Salvini during a Young Padanians rally in 2006
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