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Juncker Wants Italy's Five Star in Pro-EU Bloc, Stampa Says

Juncker Wants Italy's Five Star in Pro-EU Bloc, Stampa Says

(Bloomberg) -- The European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reached out to Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte to seek a possible role for the nation’s ruling Five Star Movement in an alliance of mainstream parties in the next European Parliament, La Stampa newspaper reported.

Juncker told Conte at a meeting in Rome on April 2 that the anti-establishment party’s attempt to form an alliance with like-minded forces across the European Union ahead of the vote in May means Five Star will be key in the new parliament, the newspaper reported, without saying where it got the information. Conte acknowledged the proposal without telling Juncker whether the party will accept it, the newspaper reported.

Five Star made its debut in the European parliamentary elections in 2014, joining a group which included the U.K.’s pro-Brexit party at the time led by Nigel Farage. Later, the Italians briefly considered leaving that group to join the pro-business Liberals, headed by former Belgian premier Guy Verhofstadt, before the idea was ditched.

Five Star are now trying to stress differences with their ruling coalition partner in Rome, the rightist League of Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini. That party is in turn forging an alliance with parties from as many as 20 nations across Europe including Germany’s AfD, the Finns party from Finland, and the Danish People’s Party.

Opening a new front in permanent tensions with his coalition ally, Five Star leader and fellow Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio targeted Salvini’s budding alliance. “I am very concerned by this drift towards the ultra-right at European level with political forces,” said Di Maio, adding these “even include in some cases parties denying the Holocaust.”

An Ipsos poll published by Corriere della Sera on Saturday showed that Five Star has recovered some lost ground, with an increase of almost 2 percentage points in voters’ support at 23.3 percent. The survey also confirmed the lead of Salvini’s League, little changed at 35.7 percent. The main opposition Democratic Party came third at 19 percent, up from 18.5 percent in a previous poll at the end of February.

--With assistance from John Follain.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lorenzo Totaro in Rome at ltotaro@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Fergal O'Brien at fobrien@bloomberg.net, Nicholas Larkin, Charles Daly

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