Italy's president Sergio Mattarella on Friday urged European Union states to "recover the founding spirit" of the 28-nation bloc.
"Europe must recover the spirit of its beginnings," Mattarella said in an interview with Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano, Vatican Radio and the Vatican News information service.
"It must care more about its citizens and must ensure there is more cooperation, equality, economic growth," Mattarella underlined.
But such change can only be achieved with the development of civil society and "moral and cultural growth", Mattarella said.
The interview came ahead of a predicted surge by populist, eurosceptic parties in the European elections next week and amid Britain's planned exit from the EU after a majority of electors voted to leave the bloc in a referendum in June 2016.
