Die Bundesregierung pocht auf die EU-Asylreform, die Dublin-Überstellungen wieder vorsieht. Doch Rom weigert sich. Was bedeutet das für die guten Beziehungen zwischen Meloni und Merz?

Seit der Krise von Ceuta vergiftet das Thema Migration wieder das politische Klima in Europa, das zeigt sich insbesondere an der Fehde zwischen den Regierungschefs von Spanien und Italien. Gibt es einen Ausweg?

Travellers caught up in migration row as Madrid introduces checks on visitors from Italy in retaliation for Rome’s move

Italy’s foreign minister has called Spain’s decision to impose retaliatory checks on travellers from Italy “incomprehensible and completely unacceptable” as people making their way between the two EU countries were left grappling with the effects of the escalating feud.

Spain started carrying out spot checks on visitors from Italy at midnight on Saturday. The tit-for-tat move came after Rome infuriated Madrid by launching checks on 1 August for travellers from Spain in response to the recent influx of about 72,000 people into Ceuta, a Spanish territory in north Africa.

Der große Migrationsdruck in die spanische Nordafrika-Exklave sorgt weiter für Zwist zwischen Madrid und Rom. Weil Italien sich weigert, seine Grenzkontrollen einzustellen, kontrolliert Spanien jetzt ebenfalls.

The early success of Roberto Vannacci’s National Future sends an ominous signal as extreme politics become normalised

When a serving Italian general published a far-right tract in 2023 entitled The World Turned Upside Down, a disciplinary inquiry swiftly followed. Roberto Vannacci’s text was a sustained exercise in bile and bigotry, attacking among other things the “normalisation” of homosexuality, and questioning whether a high-profile black volleyball star could really be considered Italian. The controversy sent the book into the bestseller charts, and its author was suspended for bringing the army into disrepute.

A year out from Italy’s next general election, Mr Vannacci is a problem not for the military but for the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. Now a member of the European parliament, in February he exploited his notoriety to found National Future, a political party which argues that Ms Meloni’s coalition government has sold out its far-right supporters through not being extreme enough. The “true right”, according to the former paratrooper – who once served as a military attache in Moscow – should be pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine, anti-EU, and committed to restoring the “cultural homogeneity” of Italy through the expulsion of immigrants and their descendants.

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Spin Time provides homes, food banks and after-school clubs but the authorities have locked out residents

Hundreds of people have spent a week sleeping in tents in the Rome heat amid a standoff between Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government and local politicians over the future of Italy’s most high-profile centre for housing and social assistance.

A minor fire last week forced the evacuation of the building, occupied by grassroots groups since 2013, and it has remained closed as the Meloni government attempts to crack down on such squatted properties.

Die Innenminister beraten über Lehren aus der Migrationskrise in der spanischen Exklave und von der Leyen lobt den spanischen Premier. Bis alle Verwerfungen überwunden sind, dürfte es aber noch dauern.

Instead of finger-pointing at Spain, mainstream EU leaders should be showing solidarity with its prime minister, Pedro Sánchez

At least 72 people are believed to have died late last week, most of them drowned or crushed as they joined tens of thousands of others in attempting to swim from Moroccan waters to the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. Yet the scale of that human tragedy has barely registered, as Donald Trump has decried an “invasion” while European politicians exploit the crisis to serve their own agendas. If further evidence were needed of the way that the radical right increasingly distorts the terms of the migration debate in the EU, the last few days have furnished it.

More needs to be understood about the drivers behind a shocking episode. Misinformation on social media – orchestrated or otherwise – appears to have played a big part, following a Spanish supreme court ruling that migrants arriving by sea could not be summarily turned back. Moroccan authorities seemingly did little to prevent the chaotic exodus, which echoed previous smaller incidents and focused international attention on a territory whose sovereignty Rabat contests. If there were online indications that such an incursion was a possibility, no alarm was sounded.

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At a time when the quickening pace of global heating has never been clearer, climate policies are being deprioritised

A new and ominous word has entered the vocabulary of firefighters struggling to cope with the vast wildfire sweeping through south-west France. A pyrocumulonimbus is a fire-generated thunderstorm that can whip up winds in unpredictable ways, making the containment of a blaze and assessment of its likely course far more difficult. A known phenomenon in North America and Australia, firefighters believe France is suffering its first in the Bordeaux region, as the country endures the consequences of the third major heatwave of the summer and prepares for a fourth.

The dire statistics of the ongoing fires in France and Spain tell a story of deepening devastation and human misery. A far greater expanse of French land has already been burnt this year, compared with the 30,000 hectares during the whole of 2025, while 220,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in the Gironde. In Spain, the environment ministry has calculated that over 170,000 hectares have been affected, compared with 29,000 last year. Over 100,000 people have been forced to flee.

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In Bologna stirbt ein 43-jähriger Marokkaner bei einem Polizeieinsatz. Danach geraten Protestierende und Polizisten gewaltsam aneinander. Warum der Fall in ganz Italien Aufregung auslöst.

Ein Video zeigt, wie Polizisten einen marokkanischen Einwanderer zu Boden drücken, bis dieser sich nicht mehr bewegt. Das Innenministerium verspricht „völlige Transparenz“, Demonstranten sprechen von einem „staatlichen Mord“.

Weil er zwei Räuber nach einem Überfall erschossen hat, sitzt der Juwelier Mario Roggero in Haft. Nun diskutiert Italien: War es Rache – oder doch Notwehr?

Italian opposition calls for elections as ruling coalition faces second major rejection of flagship policies this year

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Giorgia Meloni’s ruling coalition has pledged to persevere with its flagship plans to overhaul Italy’s electoral system after a parliamentary setback provoked calls for snap elections.

In a secret ballot in the lower house on Tuesday, an amendment to a key aspect of the reforms was defeated by a single vote, with an estimated 20-25 members of the coalition breaking ranks.

Die Opposition jubelt: Italiens Ministerpräsidentin verliert eine Abstimmung zum neuen Wahlrecht – weil Stimmen aus dem eigenen Lager fehlen. Das könnte auch mit dem Namen Berlusconi zu tun haben.

Ihre Regierungspartei wollte es ermöglichen, einzelne Kandidaten auf der Liste ihrer Partei nach vorn zu wählen. 188 Abgeordnete stimmten gegen den Entwurf der Regierungspartei, 187 dafür. Die Opposition fordert Melonis Rücktritt und Neuwahlen.

With her popularity flagging and a general election looming, the Italian PM sees a strategic advantage in the rupture

If Giorgia Meloni thought that she could put her April spat with Donald Trump over the pope’s criticism of the US war on Iran behind her, she had not banked on the US president’s capacity to bear a grudge.

Trump reignited tensions by telling an Italian TV journalist that the Italian PM had “begged” him for a picture at the recent G7 meeting in France. The Spanish newspaper El País suggested that Trump’s feathers had been ruffled by a video at the same meeting, showing Meloni appearing to scold him. In any case he doubled down on his tale in a Truth Social post, adding that Meloni wanted the photo to boost her flagging approval ratings, which he blamed on her failure to support the US in the Iran war.

Riccardo Alcaro is head of research at IAI, Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome

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Cristina Guarda says delegation was denied access to cells in offshore detention facility, at which six people have attempted suicide

An Italian MEP has questioned whether the Italian government is trying to “hide the truth” about conditions at an offshore migrant detention centre in Albania after a delegation she was part of said they were prevented from conducting a full inspection.

Cristina Guarda, from Italy’s Greens and Left Alliance (AVS), said staff at the Italian-run facility in Gjadër had refused to give MEPs from the Greens/EFA group key information, such as how many people were being held at the centre, and that they had not been allowed to access their cells.

Der Gipfel der Allianz in Ankara gilt als schicksalhaft. Friedrich Merz lud deshalb vier Staats- und Regierungschefs zu einer Vorbesprechung ins Kanzleramt. Besonders emotional wurde es für einen.

Die Wirtschaft des G-7-Staates schwächelt, aber besser als in Deutschland läuft es in Italien allemal. Und Ministerpräsidentin Giorgia Meloni punktet jetzt sogar in Brüssel.