Salvini called the talks “a long positive and constructive discussion, not only on migrants” and said that “we are close to a historic turning point for the future of Europe: today starts a series of meetings, there will be many others”.
Salvini said that judicial probes would not make him change his mind about the need to stop migrants coming to Italy by sea. “The left can’t decide who I can see,” he said referring to protests about the meeting.
Orban called Salvini the “first politician in the Mediterranean who has taken on the responsibility” of trying to stop migrants coming to Europe by sea. “Hungary is attacked by the EU because we have shown that borders can be defended.
“Hungary is proof that migrants can be stopped on dry land, and that’s where Salvini’s mission comes in. He should show that these migrants can also be stopped at sea”. Both leaders favour a hardline stance.
Orban told Salvini that “you mustn’t give way, we’re behind you” in trying to defend Italy’s maritime borders. “Europe’s security depends on your success”, he said.
Orban alwaysvaltrexonline.com said “when they were all attacking me at the European Parliament, Salvini defended me, I won’t forget it”. Orban said Salvini “is my hero” ahead of the meeting.
“I’d like to meet him personally. He is my hero,” said Orban as he left a Milan restaurant where he had lunch. “He is a companion of destiny of mine, I’m very curious to know his personality.
“I’m a great admirer and I have some experiences that I could perhaps share with him. I have that feeling”.
Orban said he had asked his friend, former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, for permission to meet Salvini. “Do you support the fact that I should meet Salvini?” Orban said he had asked Berlusconi. “‘Certainly’, he replied to me,” said the Hungarian premier.
Orban said his relations with the previous, centre-left Democratic Party (PD) led government had been “extremely bad”.
Orban has put up border walls against migrants while Salvini has refused to allow some ships to offload rescued migrants in Italy.
Politico on Tuesday warned that “Orban and Salvini, master and pupil of EU populism, the Milan meeting worries Brussels and Rome”.
Salvini said ahead of the Orban meeting that “now the left only exists to insult me, to defend the EU of the bankers and immigration without limits.
“PS in Hungary unemployment is under 5 perent, the flat tax for businesses is at 9 percent and for people at 15 percent, immigration is under control and the economy is growing by 4 percent.”
Premier Giuseppe Conte, meanwhile, met Czech Premier Andrey Babis, another member of the Visegrad Group, in Rome. Conte told Babis that the redistribution of migrants in the EU should not be “demonised”.
The Visegrad Group, which is generally Euroskeptic and rejects EU solidarity on migrants, consists of Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Leftists demonstrated near the Orban-Salvini meeting under the slogan “Europe Without Walls”.
The anger against migrants in Italy has grown. Migrants “should be drowned in the open sea”, a doctor at Spoleto hospital said on her Facebook page recently, sources said on Tuesday.
The doctor works in the ER ward at the Umbrian hospital. Il Messaggero newspaper said she called migrants “n**gers with Nike shoes and full bellies” and said they had scabies because of the “violence they perpetrated”.
The local health authority told ANSA it had started disciplinary proceedings against her. The doctor made her remarks in a Facebook group with some 38 000 doctors on it.
Her profile was deleted on Tuesday morning.