Lega Nord (North League, LN, often translated as Northern League by English-language media), whose complete name is Lega Nord per l'Indipendenza della Padania (English: North League for the Independence of Padania), is a federalist and regionalist political party in Italy. It was founded in 1991 as a federation of several regional parties of Northern and Central Italy, most of which had arisen and expanded their share of the electorate over the 1980s.

In popular usage the party is generally referred to simply as Lega and is frequently nicknamed il Carroccio in newspapers, after a four-wheeled war altar drawn by oxen, used by the medieval republics of Northern Italy which formed the Lombard League in opposition to the imperialist design of Frederick I Barbarossa.

Lega Nord's political program advocates the transformation of Italy into a federal state, fiscal federalism and greater regional autonomy, especially for the Northern regions. At times it has advocated secession of the North, which it calls Padania. Prior to the party's adoption of the term, Padania was infrequently used to name the Padan-Venetian Plain and was promoted since 1963 by sport journalist Gianni Brera as a modern name for Cisalpine Gaul.

Nord may refer to:

NORD may refer to:

Marco Travaglio (Italian pronunciation: [ˈmarko traˈvaʎʎo]; born 13 October 1964) is an Italian investigative journalist, writer and commentator.

Travaglio was born in Turin and earned a degree in history from the University of Turin. In 1992 he began to pursue journalism as a career. He started out writing for Catholic publications such as Il nostro tempo ("Our time"), then worked under the renowned journalist Indro Montanelli for newspapers such as Il Giornale and La Voce and gained the attention of Montanelli himself who once used to say about him: "No, Travaglio does not kill anyone. With a knife. He uses a more refined and not legally punishable weapon: the archives"

Since 14 September 2006, Marco Travaglio has been a regular guest in the TV program AnnoZero, hosted by Michele Santoro (also mentioned by Berlusconi in the Bulgarian Edict).

Recently, Travaglio has contributed as a columnist to prominent national newspapers and magazines, such as La Repubblica, L'Unità (with his old columns "Bananas", "Uliwood Party" and "Zorro") and Micromega. He still contributes to L'espresso with the column "Signorno'". In September 2009 he contributed to the formation of the independent newspaper, called Il Fatto Quotidiano ("The Daily Fact").

Geert Wilders (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɣɪːrt ˈʋɪldərs] or [ˈʝɪːrt ˈβ̞ɪldərs], born 6 September 1963) is a Dutch right-wing politician and the founder and leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid – PVV), the third-largest political party in the Netherlands. Wilders is the Parliamentary group leader of his party in the Dutch House of Representatives. In the formation in 2010 of the current Rutte cabinet, a minority cabinet of VVD and CDA, he actively participated in the negotiations, resulting in a "support agreement" (gedoogakkoord) between the PVV and these parties, but withdrew his support in April 2012, citing disagreements with the cabinet on proposed budget cuts. Wilders is best known for his criticism of Islam, summing up his views by saying, "I don't hate Muslims, I hate Islam". Wilders' views regarding Islam have made him a deeply divisive figure in the Netherlands and abroad.

Raised a Roman Catholic, Wilders left the church at his coming of age. His travels to Israel as a young adult, as well as to neighbouring Arab countries, helped form his political views. Wilders worked as a speechwriter for the conservative-liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie – VVD), and later served as parliamentary assistant to party leader Frits Bolkestein from 1990 to 1998. He was elected to the Utrecht city council in 1996, and later to the House of Representatives. Citing irreconcilable differences over the party's position on the accession of Turkey to the European Union, he left the VVD in 2004 to form his own party, the Party for Freedom.

Matteo Salvini (born on 9 March 1973, Milan, Italy) is an Italian politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the North-West region with the Lega Nord from 2004 to 2006 as part of the Non-Inscrits and now as a member of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group.

He sat on the European Parliament's Committee on Culture and Education, and was a substitute for the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and a member of the Delegation to the EU-Chile Joint Parliamentary Committee. He stood down from the European Parliament in November 2006.

He was re-elected in 2009 as a member of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group. He now sits on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and is a member of the Delegation for Relations with India, and the Delegation for Relations with the Korean Peninsula. He is a Substitute on the Committee on International Trade and the Delegation for Relations with South Africa.

He has been a member of Movimento Giovani Padani, Lega Nord's youth movement, and now is deputy secretary of Lega Lombarda, along with Marco Reguzzoni. At the 1997 Padanian elections he was a candidate of the list Comunisti Padani (Padanian Communists).