Europe has the ability to "beat populist, anti-European temptations," premier Paolo Gentiloni said in Berlin on Friday and urged all EU states to shoulder the burden of the migrant crisis that is helping stoke such sentiments.
"A European Union capable of advances in technology, common defence and in migration policy will always be able to beat populist, anti-European temptations," Gentiloni stated.
He was speaking at a joint press conference after a meeting with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Gentiloni decried countries that were not showing "solidarity" and failing to pull their weight over the refugee issue.
"Solidarity has to be demonstrated here," he stated.
He and Merkel stressed the need for a common asylum procedure and a reform of the so-called Dublin rules which require asylum-seekers to be returned to the first EU country they were registered in.
Merkel said that now the financial crisis was over, the EU was in a "completely new phase" and needed to secure economic growth and drive innovation.
She also said she wants the EU to take further steps towards a common foreign policy as part of a "very ambitious agenda" for the reform the 28-member bloc.
