Italy's election campaign ends, tensions between EU and right flares

Italy's leaders held their final rallies on Friday ahead of a parliamentary election at the weekend that is expected to be won by a rightist alliance, putting Rome on possible collision course with Brussels, Qazet.az reports.

A trio of centre-left and centrist groups held their closing meetings in different squares across the Italian capital, underscoring their failure to forge a united electoral pact - a decision that has enormously benefitted the conservative bloc.

Opinion polls have all predicted that Giorgia Meloni's nationalist Brothers of Italy group will emerge as the leading party on Sunday and share power with its allies the League, headed by Matteo Salvini, and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia.

Brothers of Italy traces its roots back to a post fascist movement created at the end of World War Two, and although Meloni has sought to project a moderate image, both she and Salvini have been fiercely critical of the european union, accusing Brussels of interfering too much in national politics.