No world leader has been as impressive in rescent months as Italy's Matteo Salvini of the Lega party. He is dominating that country's new government and taking strong action against mass immigration. However, Salvini understands that Italy cannot stand alone against the entire European Union. Thus, he is creating an international alliance of nationalists to fight the policies of the European Union.

He stated:

“I am thinking about a league of the Leagues of Europe, bringing together all the free and sovereign movements that want to defend their people and their borders,” he added. While Salvini’s initiative is more embryonic — MEPs from his party have just started laying the groundwork for the 2019 race — his potential populist allies already have a foothold in Brussels. Euroskeptic parties including the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and France’s National Rally hold around 150 seats out of 751 in the current Parliament.

[Macron and Salvini face off over Continent's future, by Ryan Heath, Maia de la Baume, and Jacopo Barigazzi, Politico, July 19, 2018]

In response, President Emmanuel Macron of France is creating his own alliance.

Macron has charged Christophe Castaner, En Marche’s chief executive, with pulling together potential allies across the Continent, including Italy’s former center-left Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the liberal Spanish Ciudadanos party. “What we want is to create a civil, political movement in all of Europe which would defend more and better Europe in reaction to populists and nationalists,” Albert Rivera, the leader of Ciudadanos, told POLITICO.



What this shows is that the dividing line in Europe is not between nations, but between those who want Europe to remain culturally and ethnically European, and those who see the European Union as a giant administrative body ruling over an economic bloc of random denizens. Mass immigration is clearly being used as a tool by Brussels to break apart the nation-states. On the one hand, it is somewhat ironic that the only way separate nations are going to survive is via nationalists working together. However, it may ultimately lead to a more authentic EU, a true European Union, as nationalists start forming a real sense of themsleves as Continentals sharing a common destiny, even while treasuring their own national and regional identities.