Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini escalated the ongoing standoff between the EU and Italy, saying he would bring down the government if the coalition’s budget deficit target was changed.

The remarks by Salvini, Italy’s de facto leader who has been enjoying a steady climb in public opinion polls as he has continued his hardline negotiating approach with the European establishment, were quoted by newspaper La Repubblica hours before the country’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, was scheduled to make an attempt in Brussels to convince the European Commission that the country’s budget is sound. That, as is widely known by now, include the 2.4% deficit goal for 2019 that has become a lightning rod for Commission objections.

“The 2.4 percent deficit target can’t be touched, otherwise I will bring down the government,” Repubblica quoted Salvini as saying in a telephone call to Conte. The report said Salvini was willing to make only minor concessions in next year’s spending plan.

For Savlini the threat of new elections poses little downside risk: according to a recent poll, most Italians view Salvini, the outspoken leader of the anti-immigrant League party, as the real head of government, with just one in six casting Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in that role. The monthly survey in La Repubblica newspaper showed 58% considered Salvini the leader, while 16 percent picked Conte and 14 percent chose Luigi Di Maio, who heads the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and is the co-head of the coalition government. Salvini and Di Maio are deputy prime ministers in Conte’s coalition government, which took office in June and which the Demos poll found that 58 percent of respondents support.

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