(Bloomberg) -- With just four days to go until European Parliament elections, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini is seeking to ram through new regulations on security -- providing red meat to his League party’s core supporters while setting up a new challenge to rival and coalition partner Luigi Di Maio of the Five Star Movement.

Salvini says he’ll push for measures that include giving his interior ministry powers over migrant boats in territorial waters at a cabinet meeting, possibly Wednesday. Salvini, who used the immigration issue to become Italy’s most popular politician, failed to get the original version of his security decree approved when the cabinet convened earlier in the week.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Di Maio, who also serves as deputy premier, are hesitant to oppose Salvini’s initiative in the run-up to the election, daily La Stampa reported Wednesday. Conte and Di Maio are counting on President Sergio Mattarella to put the brakes on the proposals, hoping the plan can be pushed back until after the election.

Di Maio said Wednesday the decree can go ahead if it’s constitutional -- a decision that would come under the president’s purview. A proposal to fine humanitarian groups providing aid to migrants in the Mediterranean has been stricken from Salvini’s plan, Di Maio said in an interview with Rai radio.

If the cabinet doesn’t meet to approve the measures before the Sunday vote, “I at least want to know why,” Salvini said in an interview with Corriere della Sera.

Still, the League leader has sought to downplay tensions which have escalated in the closing weeks of the campaign, repeatedly saying the administration won’t collapse after the vote.

‘My Word’

“I give my word that we’ll keep going with this government, which is doing so many things, from immigration to taxes,” Salvini said at a rally in the southern city of Bari on Tuesday.

Salvini on Wednesday also looked to scotch rumors that he might push for a cabinet shakeup if the League emerges as the winner in the European vote.

“Nothing will change: even if the League wins, as it appears, I won’t ask for an extra minister or an extra armchair,” he said on Canale 5 television. Still, the League leader couldn’t resist returning to the theme of security, saying “Europe has opened up to a mass immigration which only we, only Italy, only I have stemmed.”

Di Maio also pledged to keep the coalition going, saying in the Rai interview that the government should go ahead -- if it acts on corruption. That’s a dig on Salvini’s League, which fought unsuccessfully to prevent the expulsion of one of its lawmakers amid a corruption probe.

(Updates with Salvini interview in second-to-last paragraph.)

To contact the reporters on this story: Jerrold Colten in Milan at jcolten@bloomberg.net;John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Dan Liefgreen

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