The Memorial Center of the Republic of Srpska is bringing its international 'Learn About Serbian Suffering' campaign to Rome from September 7 to 13, reports NewsEurope. The initiative aims to introduce Italian and wider European audiences to the historical experience of the Serbian people and to the suffering of civilians during some of the most tragic periods of 20th-century European history.
The digital exhibition will appear on large LED screens in several central Roman locations, including Piazza della Repubblica on Via Nazionale, Castel Sant’Angelo on Lungotevere Prati, Cavour, Lungotevere Testaccio, the Trastevere area around Marconi, Monteverde, and Gianicolo, and Via Gregorio VII near the Vatican.
The campaign is founded on the belief that Serbian history should be examined beyond the political interpretations and stereotypes that have influenced parts of Western public opinion for decades.
The Serbian people have deep historical roots in Europe, including in its cultural, civilizational, and spiritual traditions. Nevertheless, much of Western European public opinion remains insufficiently familiar with their historical experience, especially with the suffering of Serbian civilians during the wars of the 20th century.
This lack of awareness is particularly evident in relation to the breakup of Yugoslavia and the conflicts of the 1990s. During that period, simplified interpretations of the role played by the Serbs became widespread in parts of Western public discourse. Complex political and historical developments were frequently reduced to a division between perpetrators and victims, while the Serbian wartime experience received limited attention. Consequently, the suffering of families who lost relatives, homes, and entire communities was often overlooked, as were the experiences of hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes and ancestral lands.
The campaign seeks to respond to this omission in Europe’s collective memory.
Its purpose is not to accuse any nation, state, or society. Instead, it invites the public to consider this part of European history from a broader perspective, using archival material, documented facts, and, above all, the firsthand accounts of people who survived war, persecution, detention camps, and the loss of family members.
According to Denis Bojić, director of the Memorial Center of the Republic of Srpska (pictured), the campaign was created to bring the historical experience of the Serbian people and the suffering of Serbian civilians during different periods of the 20th century to audiences beyond the borders of the Republic of Srpska and Serbia. He said the initiative focuses on families who lost loved ones, people driven from their homes, victims of persecution and detention camps, and generations that continued their lives while carrying the consequences of those losses.
Bojić described the project as a responsibility toward both victims and future generations. He emphasized the importance of preserving their names, faces, and testimonies and making them available to people who have not yet encountered this dimension of European history. He also identified the preservation and international accessibility of this memory as one of the Memorial Center’s principal tasks.
Italy, he noted, has particular importance because it offers an opportunity to present Serbian history in one of Europe’s major centers of culture and civilization. The campaign aims to encourage a broader and more open discussion of Serbian suffering based on documentation and personal testimony.
Bojić added that the project’s objective is to ensure that Serbian victims are not remembered solely as statistics in historical accounts, but as individuals with recognizable faces and personal stories within Europe’s shared memory. In his view, preserving the memory of victims also means preserving a people’s dignity, identity, and understanding of its own history.
The decision to present the campaign in Italy, and specifically in Rome, reflects the longstanding respect among Serbs for Italian civilization and its achievements, from ancient Rome and Roman law to Italy’s broader contribution to European culture.
Rome’s historical importance and its influence on European law, institutions, and culture give the initiative additional significance. Presenting the Serbian experience in the city therefore represents an opportunity to place it within a wider European context.
The organizers also point to more recent ties that remain important in Serbian public memory. Italian KFOR units in Kosovo and Metohija contributed to the protection of the Serbian population and Orthodox cultural heritage. Their long-term role in safeguarding the Visoki Dečani Monastery and other Serbian religious sites continues to be remembered.
The organizers regard these links as a basis for strengthening relations between the two peoples. The Rome presentation is intended not only to share historical material, but also to support continued friendship and cooperation and to introduce the Serbian experience to audiences in one of Europe’s most significant cultural centers.
The Memorial Center of the Republic of Srpska was founded on May 30, 2024, following a decision by the Government of the Republic of Srpska. Its mission is to collect, document, preserve, and present testimonies concerning the suffering of the Serbian people.
Oral history is central to its work. The institution gathers personal accounts from people who directly experienced war, persecution, and other forms of suffering. More than 1,500 audiovisual testimonies have so far been recorded and collected, making the project one of the largest initiatives of its kind in Southeastern Europe.
The Center seeks to ensure that these experiences are not preserved only in books, archives, or statistical records. By documenting the voices and faces of survivors, it aims to maintain a direct connection with the people who lived through these events. The testimonies are recorded in the field, archived, and incorporated into documentaries, publications, exhibitions, and educational resources.
The Memorial Center is also available to cooperate with institutions, museums, archives, researchers, and other organizations in Europe and elsewhere that work in the fields of history, oral history, and remembrance culture. The presentation in Italy forms part of a broader effort to establish links with European institutions and to make testimonies about the suffering of the Serbian people accessible to international audiences.
Greece and Italy signed in Rome on Tuesday, September 8, the implementation agreement for the transfer of two Italian Navy FREMM frigates, ITS Carlo Bergamini (F 590) and ITS Virginio Fasan (F 591). The acquisition of the two former Italian Navy FREMM Bergamini-class frigates for approximately €460 million, is significantly strengthening the Hellenic Navy’s surface […]
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Underneath the narrow streets, churches, and palaces of the Italian city of Siena lies a sprawling network of underground aqueducts that supplied water to the Tuscan city for centuries, enabling it to flourish despite a chronic lack of nearby rivers and streams. Extending for roughly 25 kilometers, the so-called Bottini constitute an ingenious hydraulic system that sustained the city from the Middle Ages until the early 20th century.
Fountain Fontebranda, its waters fed by Bottini. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Italian police are investigating an alleged attempted sexual assault involving a French volleyball player and a Moroccan footballer during the Mediterranean Games in Taranto, Italy.
The incident is reported to have taken place on the night of Aug. 30–31 aboard the cruise ship serving as the athletes’ village. According to an initial reconstruction, the French athlete rejected a sexual approach by the alleged attacker, who would not stop and kept insisting. She began calling for help, which helped draw the attention of onboard staff. Emergency doctors from 118 and police officers responded at the scene.
The athlete was taken to hospital for checks and did not suffer any injuries. After the medical examination, she returned to the athletes’ village.
Investigators have identified the alleged attacker as a Moroccan footballer. He had already returned to Morocco with his national delegation after completing his tournament commitments. Authorities said there were no grounds for a precautionary measure or police arrest, and he was allowed to board the long-scheduled return flight with his group.
An Italian police squad, led by director Antonio Serpico, is interviewing witnesses and reviewing footage from the ship’s internal cameras, particularly those installed near the pool area. Officials say they have already gathered information that may help reconstruct what happened that night. The footballer’s departure has not halted the investigation, according to Italian newspaper La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno.
Mediterranean Games general director Carlo Molfetta said: “We are closely monitoring the development of investigations by the competent authorities to determine any responsibility for what happened. The investigations are using images from the cameras present on the village ship, which number as many as 1,200. For our part, I can only reiterate my full cooperation with the investigators’ work.”
No formal action has been taken against the identified athlete at this stage. Investigators say they are continuing to examine the circumstances and verify the French athlete’s account.
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The European Commission has approved a €20 million state aid scheme for agricultural and fishing companies in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia that are facing increased fuel and fertiliser prices due to the Middle East crisis. The scheme was approved under the Middle East Crisis Temporary State Aid Framework (METSAF) adopted by the Commission on 29 April 2026.
The scheme, which will run until 31 December 2026, aims at mitigating the impact of the increase in agricultural fuel and fertiliser prices, as well as in fishery and aquaculture fuel prices. The aid will take the form of direct grants and subsidised loans. It will be determined on the basis of the size of land used for the primary production of agricultural products, and on the basis of estimates of fuel consumption in the primary production of fishery and aquaculture products, capped to €50,000 per beneficiary. The aid is paid by the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia.
The Commission assessed the scheme under EU state aid rules, in particular Article 107(3)(c) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, which enables Member States to support the development of certain economic activities subject to certain conditions, as well as Sections 1 and 2.1 of the METSAF. The Commission found that the scheme is in line with the conditions set out in the METSAF. In particular, aid will be granted based on a scheme with a clear estimated budget and will be provided to temporarily support the development of companies active in primary production of agricultural products. The Commission concluded that the scheme is necessary, appropriate and proportionate to facilitate the development of an economic activity and does not adversely affect trading conditions to an extent contrary to the common interest. On this basis, the Commission approved the Italian regional scheme under EU State aid rules.
For nearly seven decades, one of the most feared men in Rome lived an otherwise ordinary life. He sold umbrellas, attended church, and walked the narrow streets of the Borgo district near the Vatican. Yet whenever he crossed the Tiber River, Romans knew that someone was about to die.
His name was Giovanni Battista Bugatti, though history remembers him by a different name: Mastro Titta.
The European Commission has approved a €20 million state aid scheme for agricultural and fishing companies in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia that are facing increased fuel and fertiliser prices due to the Middle East crisis. The scheme was approved under the Middle East Crisis Temporary State Aid Framework (METSAF) adopted by the Commission on 29 April 2026.
The scheme, which will run until 31 December 2026, aims at mitigating the impact of the increase in agricultural fuel and fertiliser prices, as well as in fishery and aquaculture fuel prices. The aid will take the form of direct grants and subsidised loans. It will be determined on the basis of the size of land used for the primary production of agricultural products, and on the basis of estimates of fuel consumption in the primary production of fishery and aquaculture products, capped to €50,000 per beneficiary. The aid is paid by the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia.
The Commission assessed the scheme under EU State aid rules, in particular Article 107(3)(c) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, which enables member states to support the development of certain economic activities subject to certain conditions, as well as Sections 1 and 2.1 of the METSAF. The Commission found that the scheme is in line with the conditions set out in the METSAF. In particular, aid will be granted based on a scheme with a clear estimated budget and will be provided to temporarily support the development of companies active in primary production of agricultural products. The Commission concluded that the scheme is necessary, appropriate and proportionate to facilitate the development of an economic activity and does not adversely affect trading conditions to an extent contrary to the common interest. On this basis, the Commission approved the Italian regional scheme under EU state aid rules.
A teenage girl is in critical condition after a boat carrying ten illegal migrants struck her off Su Giudeu beach in Chia, Italy, yesterday afternoon. The boat was transporting migrants from North Africa.
The victim sustained severe injuries, including fractures and lacerations, after being caught by the boat’s propeller. The injuries led her to lose consciousness, but she was rescued by lifeguards before she could drown. Once they could drag her to shore, they began to administer first aid.
The horrifying incident happened at approximately 4:30 p.m. in the bathing area in front of Su Giudeu beach where the 118 air ambulance landed, according to TGR.
Due to the severity of her injuries, emergency medical personnel intubated the young woman on-site. She was then airlifted via air ambulance to Brotzu Hospital in Cagliari, where she was admitted in critical condition.
While it remains unclear exactly how the young woman became trapped by the engine propeller, boats carrying undocumented migrants have increasingly appeared directly on popular swimming beaches across Europe over recent years. Often, these vessels offload their passengers right in front of shocked beachgoers.
The risk of a serious accident during these landings is high. Smugglers are often desperate to quickly unload their cargo and escape, creating high-tension situations where they fail to notice swimmers. Additionally, after grueling journeys at sea, the arriving passengers are frequently eager to scramble ashore as fast as possible.
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Italian police officers are patrolling on the streets of Athens together with their Greek colleagues. The new policing program following an agreement between Greece and Italy in 2025. Greece and Italy have launched joint police patrols in Athens and Rome in August 2026, implementing the 2025 agreement to strengthen public security, prevent crime and better […]
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Scattered across Florence, in the narrow streets, is a curious architectural feature that many visitors walk past without noticing. Set into the walls of grand Renaissance palaces are tiny arched openings, barely large enough to pass a bottle through. These openings, known as buchette del vino or “wine windows,” were originally created to sell wine directly from aristocratic estates to ordinary citizens. While they were born out of economic necessity in the 16th century, these small windows gained renewed importance during periods of epidemic disease, helping Florentines conduct business while minimizing physical contact.
A wine window, still functioning. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
In the summer of 1953, a stray dog stepped off a freight train at the railway station of Campiglia Marittima, a small town in Tuscany, Italy. Nobody knew where he had come from or how long he had been wandering. Mirna, the daughter of the stationmaster Elvio Barlettani, fell in love with the dog and persuaded her father to let her adopt him. Barlettani reluctantly agreed because rail regulations strictly forbade employees from adopting dogs. Barlettani named him Lampo, the Italian word for “lightning.” It was a fitting name. Lampo was energetic, intelligent, and seemingly incapable of staying in one place for long.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
When the G20 met on African soil for the first time in November 2025, it signalled that the continent is becoming more important to the world as an economic partner. China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have already spent the past decade gaining ground as trade partners to African countries, narrowing the EU’s long-held lead.
France and Italy have recast their economic strategies accordingly, hunting for markets and suppliers of their own in Africa as global alliances shift and supply chains fracture. In 2026 alone, Italy convened its second Africa Summit in Addis Ababa and France held its Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, the first France-Africa summit co-organised with an African country outside France or Francophone Africa. The rest of Europe is also adapting its approach. Since 2020, at least nine European countries have revised or substantially repositioned their Africa policies, recognising that Africa can be more than a supplier of natural resources.[1]
Africa’s own governments are pressing for this shift, positioning themselves as equal partners rather than aid recipients. European language is adjusting to match, with Brussels, Paris and Rome talking more about investment and partnership than about aid. European leaders must now make those national strategies pull in the same direction, keeping pace with rivals and delivering for both sides of the Mediterranean.
The EU is Africa’s largest trading partner, but individually its largest member states are just middle-sized players in today’s Africa.
Investment tells a similar story. European firms hold the largest stock of foreign investment in Africa, over €250bn, but only 10% of all new investment to African companies in 2024 came from Europe.[2] China and Gulf Arab states have spent the past decade increasing state-backed private investment to build market share across the continent. On present trends, the EU will fall further behind.
The kind of investment matters as much as its scale in making Africa a stronger industrial partner for Europe: greenfield manufacturing projects, regional infrastructure and industrial ecosystems do more than capital alone to build that capacity. However, European commercial ties with Africa are more extractive than transformative. In 2025, 70% of EU imports from Africa were primary products and just 28% were manufactured goods. Both French and Italian imports from Africa follow the same trend, which also shows up in where the money goes. In 2024, Italy and France were among the top investors in Africa’s extractives. Most capital-exporting economies share this extractive bias, since it reflects where Africa’s industrial development currently stands. Manufacturing gets only a modest share of investment, even though it matters most for the continent’s shift away from raw material exports.
The reason lies in how investors price risk. Capital is expensive in Africa: investors see the continent as disproportionately risky, which pushes money towards safe, asset-backed extractive projects rather than the long-term capital needed for more uncertain sectors, such as manufacturing. Even Africa’s own $4trn in domestic capital sits idle: weak banks and cautious institutions channel it into short-term holdings and government debt instead of long-term manufacturing investment.
France, Europe’s traditional leader on African matters because of its colonial and post-colonial history, and Italy, now seeking to emerge as its rival in European policy towards Africa, are already trying to address these issues. Both have overhauled their Africa policies and both used their G7 presidencies (in 2024 and 2026 respectively) to position Africa and development cooperation within a broader agenda of economic security built on private capital rather than aid. Yet this shift has not been matched by greater strategic coordination across Europe.
France, Italy and the EU broadly agree on what matters—energy, critical minerals, infrastructure, skills and industrialisation—but not on how to pursue it. A growing number of other member states, such as Germany and Spain, now see the continent as a partner for secure supply chains and political influence. The EU’s Global Gateway, its flagship strategy to mobilise up to €300bn in global infrastructure investment by 2027, was meant to give these efforts a common framework. Yet these strategies largely continue to operate in parallel, reflecting national priorities, commercial interests and historical ties. That leaves Europe without the scale, coherence or investor confidence needed to support industrial ecosystems and compete with partners able to combine finance, diplomacy and commercial clout.
Italy’s flagship Africa strategy, the 2024 Mattei Plan, and France’s 2026 Africa Forward investment strategy illustrate this dynamic: though the two emerged from different starting points, they increasingly pursue the same objectives, target overlapping countries and lean on comparable financial instruments. This reflects both Europe’s converging strategic interests and the reality that Africa’s infrastructure deficit concentrates investment in a narrow set of sectors. But it also shows that these strategies are additive rather than complementary.
A core part of France’s and Italy’s new strategies is how to finance their ambitions in Africa. China, the UAE and even America use their private sectors as tools of state strategy. Italy and France are responding by using public money to pull in private investment and international lenders.
The Mattei Plan itself is a modest €5.5bn public fund spread over four years (2024–2027), but it uses guarantees, development finance and partnerships to unlock far more money than that. Italy’s export credit agency, SACE, has already put up €4bn in guarantees since the Mattei Plan was launched, pulling in an estimated €18.5bn of private funds. Partners such as the African Development Bank (AfDB), the World Bank and the UAE add even more to the pot.
France’s plan, set out in the Africa Forward Summit, is part of a wider €23bn package, split between a €14bn pledge from Paris and €9bn from African partners. Of that, just €1.94bn is public funds; the rest is private. The strategy targets African strategic autonomy, especially in food and digital technology, and leans more on small businesses, private investors, and risk-mitigation tools such as the African Trade and Investment Development Insurance, a pan-African credit insurer. As with Italy, the aim is to make limited public money go further.
Rome and Paris find it easier to build coalitions with international lenders and non-European partners than with each other
Both countries have internationalised their financing—leaning on institutions such as the AfDB, the World Bank, Gulf sovereign investors and export-credit cover. Yet joint European ventures remain rare: aside from a handful of joint initiatives—such as the collaboration between the Italian, French and German state development banks on a water infrastructure project in Morocco under the Mattei Plan, or Denmark’s support for the Italy-AfDB Mattei Plan financing facility—both strategies have attracted relatively little structured participation from other European governments. Rome and Paris find it easier to build coalitions with international lenders and non-European partners than with each other. This limits opportunities to pool resources and build larger industrial investment platforms.
France and Italy are changing course. The EU should now turn their separate initiatives into systems that reshape investment and drive African industrialisation. Three recommendations show how.
Since European countries individually cannot outspend China or the Gulf states, they must change the terms on which their capital competes. Member states and European institutions should increasingly pool guarantees, coordinate development finance institutions and build common project pipelines. Joint risk-sharing mechanisms involving institutions such as Italy’s development bank (Cassa Depositi e Prestiti), France’s development agency (Agence Française de Développement), the European Investment Bank and African financial institutions would reassure private investors more than multiple national commitments operating independently. The objective should be to change the risk calculus for investors.
European countries deal with Africa country by country, or sector by sector. Industrialisation, however, crosses borders and sectors. Value chains need regional energy systems, transport corridors, customs integration, digital connectivity and labour mobility. Europe’s comparative advantage lies precisely in its experience building integrated markets. Even its most ambitious African venture, the Lobito Corridor—a planned rail line linking Congolese and Zambian mines to Angola’s Atlantic coast, backed by America, the EU and Italy—has yet to knit infrastructure, investment and regional integration into a single plan. Rather than approaching Zambia, Angola or Namibia as separate investment destinations, Europeans should use their collective weight to back it, and corridors like it, as platforms that align infrastructure, regulation, energy and manufacturing across several countries.
Some barriers sit above any single project: high sovereign risk premiums, the cost of capital and weaknesses in the global financial system continue to discourage productive investment in Africa. Europe should use platforms such as the G7 and the upcoming UK and South Korean G20 presidencies to ensure greater African participation in these discussions. It should also work to reform the global investment environment itself: support the African Credit Rating Agency, use multilateral guarantees more, and make financing cheaper for African economies. Shaping these rules is how Europe can help Africa become an industrial partner.
***
Europe is adapting, and France and Italy are showing the way. The challenge now is to weave these separate national efforts into one system capable of making Africa a genuine economic partner with a stronger geopolitical voice.
[1] Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom.
[2] EU outward investment to Africa: €9bn in 2024, per Eurostat (approximately $9.7bn converted at the yearly average exchange rate of 1 EUR = 1.0822 USD). Total FDI inflows into Africa: $97bn in 2024, per UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2025. $9.7bn ÷ $97bn ≈ 10%.
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