ROME - Tensions between European governments rise as Italian Interior Minister has slammed the French President for being a 'hypocrite' over harsh border policy, while the EU has threatened to 'punish' Italy if they withdraw financial contributions, government sources reveal.

 The French president Emmanuel Macron spoke in an interview in Denmark on Wednesday about the Interior Minister’s meeting with Hungarian leader Viktor Orban: “I will not yield a single thing to these dangerous nationalists. I’m the anti-populist. If Orban and the leader of the League see me as their enemy, then they are right.”

 Ahead of the migration summit in Saltsburg on Sept 20, Macron has spent three days in Denmark and Finland looking for allies to form a “progressive arch” in Europe: in opposition to “nationalist and populist governments”.

 The comments did not leave Salvini intimidated; responding hours later through his Twitter, the Interior Minister wrote: “Emmanuel ‘good boy’ Macron has turned away more than 48 thousand migrants – including women and children -  at the French-Italian border in the last year. If he were to have any sort of good taste, he would stay quiet and not condescend our country.”

 “Macron is a hypocrite and a big-mouth,” said Salvini live on Radio Padova. “He’s a big-mouthed hypocrite who thinks only about making money. Italy has paid, saved and done enough in this humanitarian crisis – we don’t need to take solidarity lessons from anyone.”

 Gunther Oettinger, the EU budget and human resources commissioner, has warned that Italy will “face punishment” if it refuses to pay its annual contribution, which Di Maio has been threatening to do.

 Luigi Di Maio, however, has stood by his threat and continues to confront the commissioner: “Our position on the budget veto remains, if then in the coming days they want to start rediscovering the spirit of ‘solidarity’ with which the EU was founded, we’ll talk about it.”

 At the centre of the Vienna summit today was Italy’s minister of defence, Elisabetta Trenta, who proposed a “rotation of ports” for the disembarkation of migrants – the idea being that each boat is “assigned to a particular port, whose country will take care of those on board.”

 “EU boats should not just have Italy as an option to dock in. The Sophia Operation has not worked out as planned – smuggler routes through the Mediterranean have never been neutralised. It’s time we changed the operation.”

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