The EPP, which includes Merkel’s party, recently sanctioned one of its members, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, after it ran a campaign of anti-immigration posters in Hungary, including ones against Soros. Salvini has also targeted Soros in speeches and has been more effusive about Orbán than he has about Merkel. And many Italian voters, not only on the far right, associate the euro with German-dominated Europe. (At Saturday’s rally, Salvini called on voters to oust “the left” in the European elections, even though conservatives have long been that Parliament’s dominant force.)

Read: Viktor Orbán’s war on intellect

If the Conservatives and the socialist bloc can’t form a majority, then Macron, whose party is part of a liberal grouping, can play kingmaker. “Beyond a national leader, he’s portraying himself as a European leader of the Europeanist front,” Nathalie Tocci, the director of Italy’s Istituto di Affari Esteri, told me.

Macron’s strategy for the European elections is a list of candidates from his own party as well as from the center right and Greens. But the campaign has struggled to gain attention in France, where “yellow vest” protesters have been demonstrating against the rising cost of living and calling for his resignation. Not surprisingly, Le Pen’s campaign is focused on making the European elections a referendum on Macron.

In Italy, Salvini’s social-media blitz and relentless anti-immigrant rhetoric have made the League the most popular party in Italy, polling at 30 percent, above its senior partner in the governing coalition, the antiestablishment Five Star Movement. If the League strongly outperforms the Five Star Movement, Salvini might pull the plug on the government in Rome and push for early national elections, which could make him prime minister.

Of course, the Macron-Salvini divide is not completely straightforward. For one, national governments—especially Germany and France—basically already do shape European policy. And the European Parliament can be toothless. No one has pushed its limits better than Orbán, whose country received billions in EU largesse while his government was scaling back the independence of the media and passing laws cracking down on foreign NGOs.

Read: How Hungary ran George Soros out of town

But in the run-up to the European elections, the French president has been a convenient target for Salvini, to the point that relations between Italy and France hit a postwar low. Salvini’s constant attacks on Macron have been coupled with a surprise visit by Luigi di Maio, the leader of the Five Star Movement, to France to meet with some of the yellow-vest protesters who have been holding weekly, often violent, demonstrations since November. In response, France recalled its ambassador from Rome. (He later returned.)

Macron went on Italian state television and downplayed the tensions as a “misunderstanding.” After all, staying outraged would only play into Salvini’s hand. In his TV interview, Macron asked why there was so much fear in Italy today, and expressed how much he loved the country. He also conceded—a little too little, a little too late—that Europe hadn’t helped Italy handle the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who had arrived in the country since 2014, far more than ever arrived in France. (Macron’s style is more polished than Salvini’s, but France also tightly controls its border and has blocked migrants from crossing from Italy into France.)