Italian and Luxembourg ministers engaged in a bitter argument during an EU meeting over the union’s immigration policies. Italy’s Matteo Salvini referred to migrants as “slaves,” resulting in angry exchanges.

The verbal stand-off happened on Friday in Vienna. Salvini, the interior minister and leader of the anti-immigration Lega Nord, was describing how his country’s perception of undocumented immigrants from across the Mediterranean differs from that of Luxembourg.

“Perhaps in Luxembourg there are these needs [to support an ageing workforce with immigrants],” he said, according to footage of the exchange. “But in Italy, there is a need to help children have more children, not acquire slaves to replace the children we are not having.”

Luxembourg’s Jean Asselborn has a hissy fit while Salvini drops truth bombs about mass migration. pic.twitter.com/y8SYDtlnSQ — Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) September 17, 2018

This line of argument visibly irritated Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who was sitting two places down from Salvini.

“Allez, Allez, Allez,” he said in the background, using a French language equivalent of “Blah, blah, blah.”

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Salvini said he would respond to this opinion respectfully and reiterated the argument. Asselborn, who became quite agitated, exclaimed:

“In Luxembourg, sir, we have dozens of thousands of Italians! They came as migrants, they worked in Luxembourg, so you in Italy would have money for your children,” he said, adding “Merde alors (goddammit)!”

The verbal sparring between the two officials continued after the meeting, albeit indirectly. Asselborn denounced Salvini in an interview with Spiegel Online at the weekend, saying he was using “the methods and tone of the fascists from the 30s” against immigrants, accusing him of a calculated provocation during the meeting.

Salvini hit back on Sunday on social media.

“The Socialist minister of the fiscal paradise of Luxembourg calls me a ‘fascist’ today after comparing our Italian emigrant grandparents to today’s illegal migrants and after interrupting my speech,” he tweeted. “If he likes immigrants so much, he can have them all, we’ve already received too many in Italy.”

Ma dico io, che problemi hanno in #Lussemburgo?!?Nessun fascismo, soltanto rispetto delle regole.Se gli piacciono tanto gli immigrati che li accolga tutti in Lussemburgo, in Italia ne abbiamo già accolti anche troppi.Buona domenica a tutti, cin cin🍷 pic.twitter.com/psx29NTPpa — Matteo Salvini (@matteosalvinimi) September 16, 2018

While the EU no longer receives as many people fleeing from Middle East and North Africa as it did at the peak of the 2015 crisis, the issue remains a thorny one. Italy, which is among the primary destinations for migrants, elected an unlikely coalition of left and right politicians united by an anti-immigration stance to lead it this year. This brought the country into the club of eastern European nations like Hungary and Poland, who have been resisting Brussels’ plan to redistribute asylum-seekers among EU members according to quotas.

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