elected once again in the European Parliament in the June election. In the Parliament, he sat in the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group. After he was re-elected in 2009 as an MEP, he sat on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and was a member of the delegation for relations with India, and the delegation for relations with the Korean peninsula. He was a substitute on the Committee on International Trade and the delegation for relations with South Africa. On 2 June 2012, Salvini became the federal secretary of the Lombard League, defeating Cesarino Monti with 403 votes against 129. Following the election, on 12 October he decided to leave the office of group leader and city councilor after 19 years. Salvini was later elected deputy in the 2013 general election, but he renounced his mandate on the first day of the legislature, and was replaced by Marco Rondini; Salvini maintained the position of MEP. After the 2014 European election, in which he was re-elected, he returned to the Non-Inscrits. In June 2015, he was part of the creation of a new group, the Europe of Nations and Freedom, which also included parties such as the French National Front and the Dutch Party for Freedom; he was also the vice-president of the Italian delegation. Federal Secretary of Lega Nord In September 2013, Roberto Maroni, secretary of LN and Salvini's mentor, announced he would soon leave the party's leadership. After a few weeks, Salvini announced his candidacy for the first Lega's leadership election. A congress was scheduled for mid-December and in accordance with the new rules set for the election five candidates filed their bid to become secretary: Umberto Bossi, Giacomo Stucchi, Manes Bernardini, Roberto Stefanazzi and Salvini. Of these, only Bossi and Salvini gathered the 1,000 necessary signatures by party members to take part in the internal "primary", and Salvini collected four times the signatures gathered by Bossi. On 7 December 2013, Salvini, who counted on the support of Roberto Maroni and most of the party's senior figures (including Flavio Tosi, who had renounced a bid of his own), defeated Umberto Bossi with 82% of the vote in the "primary". A week later, his election was ratified by the party's federal congress in Turin. Under Salvini, the party embraced a strongly critical view of the European Union, especially of the euro, which he described a "crime