VENTOTENE, Italy (AP) – The Latest on the meeting of leaders from Italy, France and Germany (all times local):
6:00 p.m.
The leaders of Italy, France and Germany have paid their respects at the tomb of one of the founding fathers of European unity in a symbolic bid to relaunch the European project following Britain’s decision to leave the EU.
Standing together in the cemetery of the sun-soaked island of Ventotene, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Holland placed three bouquets of blue and yellow flowers – the colors of the European Union – on the simple white marble tombstone of Altiero Spinelli.
Spinelli, along with another intellectual confined to Ventotene in the 1940s by Italy’s fascist rulers, co-wrote the “Ventotene Manifesto” calling for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war.