Matteo Salvini (Italian pronunciation: [matˈtɛːo salˈviːni]; born 9 March 1973) is an Italian politician serving as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport since 2022. He has been Federal Secretary of Italy's Lega party since December 2013 and an Italian senator since March 2018. Salvini represented Northwestern Italy in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2018.

Salvini has been a hardline Eurosceptic politician, holding a starkly critical view of the European Union, especially of the euro. He opposes illegal immigration into Italy and the EU as well as the EU's management of asylum seekers. He is also considered one of the main leaders of the populist wave in Europe during the 2010s and a member of the neo-nationalist movement, which is a rightist ideology that emphasizes de-globalization, nativist and protectionist stances.

During his first stint as deputy prime minister, many international political commentators and newspapers, such as The Guardian, The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Economist, and The Huffington Post, characterized him as a strongman and the most influential politician in Italy after the 2018 elections. Salvini condemned the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. He had previously praised Russia's president Vladimir Putin, describing Putin in 2019 as "the best politician and statesman in the world".

Matteo Salvini was born in Milan in 1973, the son of a business executive father and a homemaker mother. In 1985, at the age of 12, he took part in game show Doppio slalom (the Italian version of Blockbusters), hosted by Corrado Tedeschi on Canale 5. And in 1993, at the age of 20, he participated on Il pranzo è servito, hosted by Davide Mengacci, which was broadcast by Rete 4.

Salvini studied at the Classical Lyceum "Alessandro Manzoni" in Milan. He later attended the University of Milan where he first studied political science before switching to history. However, he interrupted his studies to start his political career and never graduated.

Salvini has said that, as a teenager, he used to visit the left-wing self-managed social centre Leoncavallo.

In 1990, Salvini became a member of the Lega Nord, the regionalist and separatist movement founded by Umberto Bossi in 1989. He was an active member of Young Padanians Movement, LN's youth faction, of which he became city coordinator for Milan in 1992 and city secretary in 1997. In the same year, he started working as journalist for La Padania, the official newspaper of Lega Nord. In 1999 he also worked on Lega's radio broadcaster Radio Padania Libera and since July 2003 he has been registered as a journalist on the list of Italian professional journalists.

In 1993 he was elected in the City Council of Milan, a post that he would hold until 2012. While in 1997 he participated in the Padanian elections and was elected within the list Comunisti Padani (Padanian Communists), which gained 5 seats out of 210. In the following year, he was elected provincial secretary of the League for Milan.