Matteo Salvini is doing Brussels a favour with his harsh migration policy

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, is one of the most controversial politicians in Europe. The 45-year old chief of the League party exudes a down-to-earth demeanour with his common-man social media posts, in which he shares pictures of himself eating Barilla pasta and Nutella. To his many opponents, Salvini is a thick-headed, semi-fascist ideologue who wants to turn back the clock and return Europe to a dangerous form of nationalism. But to his supporters, in and out of Italy, he is a straight-talking, no-nonsense defender of his country’s sovereignty against the northern elites in Berlin and Brussels.

However Salvini is seen, one thing is beyond dispute: migration levels from Africa to Europe have reduced considerably due to his policies. The number of illegal border crossings into Europe in 2018 was at its lowest level in five years, according to the European Union’s border agency, Frontex. The Libya-to-Italy corridor across the Mediterranean Sea – what migration officials refer to as the central Mediterranean route – saw an 80 per cent decrease in the flow of people between 2017 and 2018. Departures from Libya, that until recently served as the main jumping-off point for African migrants seeking to travel to Europe, plummeted by 87 per cent; the figure for those travelling to Europe from Algeria fell by about half.