Some weeks ago, at the annual meeting of the ex Lega Nord in Pontida, the Italian Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini said that the next European elections will be a challenge between them and everybody else. Furthermore, he also affirms that “a League of the Leagues” will be established for the European parliament elections in may 2019.

The vice-PM has a very clear path on his mind: create a pan-european alliance in order to a) challenge the others organized political forces in Europe, b) maximize far right parties among the Member States, and c) be legitimized to de-legitimize Eu institutions politics and organisms (even if he is used to do so). The enormous paradox of this new political scenario is the following: the europarties are re-organizing themselves faster and better after their defeate in many Member States (France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Greece). In fact, in these countries the rhetoric chosen for the campaign, against or in favour of the Eu, didn’t worked as they forecasted. In other words, when a political party based on a strong leadership use the referendum propaganda, 8 out of 10 it lose, and this has happened for many issues, especially for the Eu. Radical positions on the European theme don’t  attract the electorate so much. Also, it doesn’t worth it due to the majority of moderate position around European citizens: the Eu Member states with higher population have (except Italy) a moderate electorate, and a political system who still survive to the “populist ascend” (right or left populism). So, the challenge on the next european elections launched by Mr Salvini, the “Salvini referendum on Eu” is not expected to work, unless the Internazionale of european populist and skeptic parties or movements will be established. If that happens the key point on eu campaign will move from a referendum propaganda between this Eu vs a totality of sovereign nation states (which means no Eu at all); to a different approach that opposes this unmanageable status quo vs a differnt idea of Europe.

However, the storytelling capabilities of anti-euparties are quite far from their competitors. The demand by citizens of more democracy and legitimacy represent a very easy win for them. In fact, this is a key point: they already marked this kind of narration and approach (not) to solve different issues on european level, it will be completely pointless challenging them on their game: you will not simply lose, you will implode. Until now, we have been quite lucky that these political parties didn’t realize that proposing a choiche like “we or everybody against us”, will not work, as it didn’t work when other political actors did it (in Italy we’re quite addicted to it). However, nowadays, they reached a certain amount of approval, and also a certain rate of maturity suggesting that this could be exactly the move they’ll trying to do. The advantange of the “everybody else” side of the coise are a lot, but first of all these movements and parties have to find a common way to clash their opponents, and to fight together, because in politics, as in wars, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.