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A field in Castagnaro, near Verona, northern Italy, has been ploughed by the land artist Dario Gambarin to mark the 60th Anniversary of the 1957 Treaty of Rome

As final preparations are underway for the EU’s 60th birthday party in Rome on Saturday, it’s not just Brexit that threatens to overshadow celebrations.



Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has signalled that Athens intends to support the Rome Declaration - after previously threatening not to - but he has called for clearer support for Greece.

The Guardian’s Helena Smith reports:

The Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, who arrived in Rome last night, reiterated that the anniversary could only be truly “celebrated” in the knowledge that European achievements applied to all.

In a letter to Jean-Claude Junker, the European Commission president, and EU council president Donald Tusk, Tsipras wrote:

For the past seven years Greece has been in economic adjustment programs in the name of which exceptions have been imposed from a whole list of achievements in our common European project …. we should know openly, officially and clearly if we also have the right to have access to these gains.

In a speech last night the leftist leader stepped up his criticism telling an audience at La Sapienza university in Rome that Europe was embroiled in existential crisis because it had surrendered its accomplishments to the International Monetary Fund.

We are at a critical moment because these days Greece is on the front line of a battle that concerns all of Europe. We are fighting to restore collective work agreements in our country, to end the exemption status now and for once and for all in the future.