There was a failure in exchange of information between Serbian and Italian side prior to Serbia-Italy football match, stated the Italian FM.
This happened because preventive information never arrived or because the exchange of preventive information did not function the way it should have, according to Franco Frattini.
Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić today expressed his regret over incidents in Italy on Tuesday, caused by visiting Serbian football fans. Jeremić spoke with his Italian counterpart Franco Frattini, it has been confirmed at the Serbian MFA in Belgrade today.
Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić will pay a one-day visit to Italy, according to the foreign ministry. Jeremić would be meeting with his Italian counterpart Franco Frattini.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that now that the ICJ’s decision has been given, Serbia and Kosovo must continue talks. He said that he hopes that Serbia’s request for candidacy status would receive support on Monday in Brussels at the scheduled meeting of the EU Council of Ministers.
Serbian and Italian FMs Vuk Jeremić and Franco Frattini announced that a summit of the two countries’ governments would be held in October in Belgrade. They said that political and economic relations between the two countries are constantly improving.
President Boris Tadić met with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini in Belgrade on Tuesday, his press service announced. The two agreed that bilateral relations between the two countries are on a high level.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini will visit Serbia this Tuesday, it has been announced. Ahead of his visit Frattini said that Italian diplomats are investing maximum efforts to soon unfreeze the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) between the European Union and Serbia and carry out a technical evaluation of Serbia’s application for accession in the Union.
Germany’s resistance to the disbursement of emergency loans for Greece is “very worrying” Italy’s foreign minister Franco Frattini said. It may need a summit of European Union leaders to be overcome, Frattini said on Monday.
Italian ambassador to Serbia Armando Varricchio said that Serbia has a central position in the region, and Italy sees it as a natural EU member.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini will be visiting Belgrade next week. Varricchio told B92 that Frattini will be talking with Belgrade officials about Serbia’s EU integration process.
Bosnia-Herzegovina has met all the requirements for abolishment of the visa regime, said Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini. Frattini is on an official visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that Serbia should apply for EU candidate status by December 25. He said that Rome supports the speeding up of the European integration of Serbia and the Western Balkans, which is why it lauded the decision to unfreeze the interim trade agreement.
The time has come for Belgrade to apply for EU membership, and the application should be submitted “before Christmas”, Italy’s FM Franco Frattini says. Frattini told the press that Serbia was on a path towards EU accession, adding that he hoped it would happen within a reasonable amount of time.
It is time Europe rewarded Serbia by liberating the visa regime and unblocking the Interim Trade Agreement, says Italian FM Franco Frattini. In an interview for Belgrade daily Danas ahead of the Serbia-Italy summit in Rome, he said that by “voluntarily implementing the Stabilization and Association Agreement Belgrade had shown its determination to continue an accelerated journey towards the EU†and that “it was now time that EU adequately rewarded Serbiaâ€.
It is time Europe rewarded Serbia by liberating the visa regime and unblocking the Interim Trade Agreement, says Italian FM Franco Frattini. In an interview for Belgrade daily Danas ahead of the Serbia-Italy summit in Rome, he said that by “voluntarily implementing the Stabilization and Association Agreement Belgrade had shown its determination to continue an accelerated journey towards the EU†and that “it was now time that EU adequately rewarded Serbiaâ€.
Italian and Serbian FMs Franco Frattini and Vuk Jeremić have announced that the 1st inter-governmental summit between the two countries will be held on Nov. 13. The summit, which will be attended by the Serbian and Italian Presidents Boris Tadić and Silvio Berlusconi, will see the signing of an agreement on a comprehensive partnership.
The crew of an Italian tugboat held for four months by Somali pirates have been freed, Italy’s foreign minister says.
Franco Frattini said no ransom money had been paid, and that the release was the result of collaboration between the Italian and Somali authorities.
The 75m (250ft) tugboat with its crew of 10 Italians, five Romanians and one Croat was towing two barges when it was seized in the Gulf of Aden in April.
It is now on its way to Djibouti, accompanied by naval vessels.
Mr Frattini expressed his satisfaction at the positive resolution of the affair and the release of the Italian citizens on board.
Their release was the result of a long process involving contact with the Somali government, the collaboration of the authorities in the semi-autonomous Puntland region, and the work of the Italian intelligence services, he said.
Somalia’s UN-backed government is battling Islamist insurgents and only controls a small part of the country.
It has not had an effective central government since 1991 and the lack of law and order has led to the dramatic rise in piracy in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes in recent years.
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Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that it is important for Italy that the Interim Trade Agreement between the EU and Serbia be unfrozen. “Italy is decisively dedicated to convincing its partners in the EU who do not support the unfreezing of the Interim Trade Agreement,†Frattini told Belgrade daily VeÄernje Novosti.
I apologise for Berlusconi
I’m sorry for our prime minister’s predictable reaction to a story about G8 summit preparations, please keep the spotlight on Italy
As a member of the Italian parliament and former magistrate who ensured that many corrupt politicians and businessmen were brought to justice in the 1990s, I wish to apologise to the editor and staff of the Guardian newspaper for the utterly predictable reaction of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and our foreign minister, Franco Frattini.
The Guardian does its best to keep the public informed. In Italy this government is not accustomed to free debate, or to hearing the truth being told. While sections of the article dealing with preparations for the G8 summit may be debatable, the rest of it contains little that can be refuted.
However, there is one classification missing from the list in the article, one published by Freedom House, which puts Italy 73rd place for freedom of the press. The real problem in our country is that information is firmly in the grip of one individual, namely our prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi – which must be one of the worst cases of conflict of interest ever recorded in any country in the western world.
Berlusconi’s control over the media is exercised via his ownership of the largest Italian publishing house, Mondadori, as well as via the country’s six television networks: three private Mediaset channels owned by Berlusconi himself and three channels of the public broadcaster RAI which Berlusconi indirectly controls and influences, with very rare exceptions I might add, through managerial staff appointments.
His virtually total control of the media allows him to maintain a dominant position and provides an endless source of revenue that helps to consolidate his position within the institutions via a wide-ranging system of patronage. In the past, these revenues were made possible by the tacit approval of previous governments that refused to address the issue of obvious conflicts of interest. Currently Berlusconi pays the Italian government a mere 1% of turnover in return for the television broadcasting frequencies conceded to him and now used for Mediaset transmissions. Since the centre-right coalition government came to power, a number of major parastatal companies have diverted their advertising expenditure from the RAI public television networks to the private networks belonging to the prime minister.
In addition to the media issue, there is now also another, namely the scourge of the “unconstitutional” government reforms. The first of these was a law known as the Alfano bill, which was ordered by Silvio Berlusconi himself as his first act after coming to power, which prohibits the prosecution of himself and the incumbents in three other senior government posts.
The provisions of this law mean Berlusconi did not have to appear in a trial in which he was facing charges of bribing a witness. David Mills, his lawyer and former husband of Blair government minister Tessa Jowell, has been sentenced to four years and six months imprisonment for accepting a bribe. On 6 October, the constitutional court is due to issue a ruling regarding the constitutionality of the Alfano bill and, should the court rule that it is indeed unconstitutional, then Berlusconi will be obliged to stand trial for allegedly bribing Mills.
I would like to conclude by appealing to the Guardian and the other foreign press not to allow the spotlight to move away from Italy and to continue to perform the same vitally important task that they have always performed in the past, namely the task of informing the public, a role that most of our media have abdicated from because they are no longer being allowed to do their job.