Free Republic

Rome CNN — Italy will build two detention centers in Albania to house migrants trying to reach its shores, Prime Minister Georgia Meloni said Monday, in an attempt to control migration figures that have almost doubled in the year since she took office. Meloni said the facilities are due to open next spring and will initially take in 3,000 people. Once the centers are “fully up and running,” Meloni said her government could process up to 36,000 people a year. Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party is facing growing domestic pressure as it has failed to deliver on an electoral...

The leaders of France and Germany joined in a symbolic celebration of unity on Sunday (8 July), hailing a relationship that has brought peace to Europe for 50 years. French President François Hollande underlined that the proposed banking union is the “first step to a budgetary union, which will open the way to stability, growth, and tighter ties.” Taking a pause from more than two years of constant crisis management that has strained Franco-German ties, President François Hollande welcomed his German counterpart, Chancellor Angela Merkel, to the city of Reims in eastern France. Hollande said France and Germany must defend...