"Italians come first," Salvini told RAI television later, announcing that he planned to head to the scene. "European restrictions and parameters come after."

Political upside

Italy's coalition government won't face any blame for the accident and may have some success in extracting political capital from it, said Francesco Galietti, founder of political consultancy Policy Sonar.

"The clear lack of maintenance on this bridge is someone else's legacy," he said. "But it could make it easier to push Brussels to accept more public investment."

Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi from the centre-left Democratic Party, who has clashed openly with Salvini and Di Maio, criticised the deputy prime minister for playing politics, even as he acknowledged the concerns about the highways.

Matteo Salvini: "If external constraints prevent us from spending to have safe roads and schools, then it really calls into question whether it makes sense to follow these rules." Andrew Medichini

"Maybe finally it is the time to discuss infrastructure, but without ideology," he wrote on Twitter. "But today, please, is a day only for silence."

Budget tensions


In the coalition agreement presented in May, the League and Five Star said they'd seek a deal with other EU members and the European Commission to exclude some investments from deficit calculations to allow for "consolidating economic growth and the country's development".

Italy's deficit this year is forecast to be 1.6 per cent of economic output, well within the euro zone's limit of 3 per cent . But the Commission has insisted on narrower deficits for Italy to reduce its €2.3 trillion ($US2.7 trillion) debt, the largest in Europe.

Concerns that Five Star's planned citizens income and the League's flat tax would widen Italy's budget deficit, combined with contagion from Turkey's currency crisis, sent the spread between Italian and German bond yields to the widest since early June on Monday, before recovering on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at the site of the collapsed Morandi bridge. He avoided making political statements.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, an academic roped in to arbitrate between Five Star and the League in government, also travelled to Genoa from a brief vacation in his native village in the south. He said he was following the situation, but avoided making political comments. Di Maio, who is also on his way to Genoa, made similar comments. President Sergio Mattarella echoed Salvini's demand for safety, without seeking to attribute blame.

"Italians have a right to a modern and efficient infrastructure that they can safely rely on in their everyday lives," he said in a statement. He said that public institutions and private operators companies that manage Italy's infrastructure must be conscious of the need to prevent accidents and upgrade transport networks.

Shares in Atlantia, which manages the stretch of highway, fell 5.4 per cent to the lowest level since April 2017.

Spending plans


Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli told RAI that the government was committed to investing in transport infrastructure to avoid a repeat of the accident in Genoa.

A view from above of the collapsed Morandi highway bridge. in ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO

"As an Italian citizen, it hurts me to constantly hear that maintenance wasn't done," he said. "We see the result."

"Years of maintenance put off 'because there isn't money"," Claudio Borghi, a Salvini ally who heads the budget committee in the lower house of parliament, said. "The safety of the Italians must come first."

For Salvini, who is also interior minister, it wasn't just EU bureaucrats in the firing line. He's also seeking to hold those directly involved to account.

"I want the names and family names of those responsible," he told RAI. "In 2018 such a tragedy is unacceptable."

Bloomberg