Luigi Di Maio, leader of the Italian 5Star Movement, attends a flash mob in Turin on January 12, 2018 | Piero Cruciatti/AFP via Getty Images 5Stars consider post-election pact with far right Italy’s anti-establishment party opens the door to ruling with Northern League.

Europe’s worst Italian nightmare just got a little more likely.

The possibility that the anti-establishment 5Star Movement will team up to form a government with the far-right Northern League was given new life Wednesday, when the leader of the 5Stars, Luigi Di Maio, opened the door to a post-election coalition.

“It’s the numbers that are forcing us,” Di Maio told his staff, according to an article in the La Stampa daily newspaper.

Such an alliance would put two of the country’s most Euroskeptic political forces at the helm of the EU’s third-largest economy.

Both the 5Stars and the Northern League have toned down their rhetoric regarding Brussels. Di Maio has dropped calls for a referendum on Italy’s membership in the euro. And Northern League leader Matteo Salvini has similarly softened his tough line on the common currency.

Both parties, however, have insisted they would not respect the EU’s 3 percent deficit target established under the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.

Even the possibility of a 5Stars-Northern League government would likely send markets into a panic. Last week, EU Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici criticized Italy’s political parties who said they would not respect the deficit target, adding that Italy is among the “political risks” facing Europe.

The motivation behind the would-be alliance is in the polls. Since bursting onto the scene in 2013, the 5Stars have refused to join other parties in a coalition. But Di Maio has said that if the party falls short of the 40 percent of votes it would need to secure a majority in parliament, he would put forward his program and see what other parties would be willing to back it.

According to the La Stampa report, Di Maio said he would prefer to join forces with the Free and Equal Party, a leftist breakaway from former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party. “But have you seen the polls?” he said. The 5Stars are polling at about 27 percent, meaning the Free and Equal Party’s 6 percent would not be enough to reach the 40 percent threshold. The Northern League is polling at about 15 percent.

Meanwhile, Salvini has kept his options open. Though he is formally in an alliance with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, he has declined to rule out governing with the 5Stars. A few months ago, he said that if there were no center-right majority, “I would pick the phone and call [Beppe] Grillo,” referring to the comedian who founded the 5Star Movement and until recently was its leader.

In an appearance on a television talk show Tuesday, Salvini stressed that his “only rival” was Renzi's Democratic Party. However, speaking in Wednesday in Sardinia, he said that talk of a deal with the 5stars was “just fantasies” since he and Berlusconi were sure to win.