Merkel steps up contest for EU’s future

Bloomberg

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Europeans against falling sway to populists, evoking the continent’s wars in a proxy showdown with Italy’s deputy premier before voters have their say next week.
On a day when far-right politics brought down a government in Austria, Merkel stepped up her message that only the EU’s established parties could protect liberal values and seven decades of prosperity built up since World War II.
As some of the region’s top nationalists rallied in Italy, Merkel’s first full-scale campaign event ahead of the European Parliament election illuminated the choices facing voters as they help determine the future of a 28-country union that’s under unprecedented strain.
“Our values mean that we can be proud of our country and at the same time work to build Europe,’’ she told a capacity crowd of 6,000 in a basketball stadium in the Croatian capital Zagreb.
For his part, Italian Deputy PM Matteo Salvini gathered a coterie of 12 nationalist parties in Milan, inveighing against migration and calling for a “fiscal shock’’ policy in line with that of President Donald Trump.
Merkel wielded her clout as Europe’s longest-serving leader to back fellow German Manfred Weber, the lead candidate for the center-right European People’s Party in the May 23-26
EU-wide election.
She pointed to Germany’s 74 years of peace, a result of European unity — and contrasted it with Croatia, a country last at war in the early 1990s after it declared independence from the fragmenting Yugoslavia.
“You know what that means,” she said, “and that’s why it’s so important that we preserve this peace.”
Salvini took the stage on a packed Cathedral Square in his hometown in northern Italy with Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally, Joerg Meuthen of Alternative for Germany and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom, all leaders of parties looking to the EU vote to ratify the populist surge sweeping much of the continent.
Salvini drew jeers from the crowd as he named his foes, denouncing “the elites and the powers which have occupied this Europe in the name of finance, of multinationals, of the God Money and of uncontrolled immigration: Macron, Merkel, Soros, Juncker.”