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. [...]
It’s a battleground on which Salvini is eager to engage. “Next year’s election will be a referendum between the Europe of the elites, banks, finance, mass migration and precariousness versus the Europe of peoples, work, tranquility, family and future,” he said earlier this month at a rally of party members and supporters in the northern Italian town of Pontida. [...]
En Marche officials have been courting members of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe parliamentary group (ALDE) with the hope of forming a large pro-European force after the election. But so far “Macronmania” has not infected the European Parliament; few believe Macron’s group will be able to rival the EPP for dominance.
Salvini’s problem is that Euroskeptics are heterogeneous and divided, and in some areas ideological enemies. On economics, for example, the National Rally and Alternative for Germany (AfD) sit at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Creating a large Euroskeptic group would require him to bridge those differences. [...]
A new Macron-centered political group would draw on the most progressive of the liberal ALDE parliamentary group, “and all those who don’t identify themselves with the EPP or Socialist forces,” said Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, a French member of parliament from En Marche and one of Macron’s point men in preparing the 2019 election campaign. “What we offer is an alternative to populists,” he said.
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