In the same week, Italy warned that Russia's campaign of sabotage and disruption against Europe is becoming more dangerous, the European Union's defence chief called for a strong response, and a report described Russia running a messaging campaign to win support from developing nations.
Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland, Portugal and Spain want EU finance ministers to discuss a new tax on oil companies at a meeting in Dublin next month.
Italy's deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini says Italy will not take back asylum seekers who first entered the EU through Italy but are now in Germany, even though EU rules say they should be sent back to the first country they entered.
Sweden is joining Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Finland in sending migrants back to Italy, the country where they first entered the European Union, using an EU rule called the Dublin Regulation.
The European Union limits how much extra debt member countries can take on each year.
This week, officials in Germany, Italy, Australia, India and Iran each said their country was already under attack, calling it 'hybrid war' rather than war — a mix of drone incursions, cut undersea cables and cyberattacks that stops short of open warfare.
A new Italian study finds Russian, Chinese and Iranian influence campaigns running side by side against Italy's institutions, each exploiting the same openings.
Spain and Italy have started checking travelers crossing between their two countries, each retaliating after the other imposed checks first.
A surge of migrants crossing into Ceuta, a Spanish territory in North Africa, led 22 EU countries to demand Spain be punished, even suspended from Schengen, the EU zone where people can travel without passport checks.
Italy has reinstated passport checks on non-EU travelers arriving from Spain, using a Schengen rule that lets any EU country restore border checks on its own, only informing Brussels afterward.
Italy, Finland and Austria are demanding that Spain be suspended from Schengen, the European agreement that lets people cross many borders without passport checks, after about 60,000 people crossed into Spain's Ceuta enclave in North Africa.
The European Union is preparing its biggest single sanctions move yet: blacklisting more than 1,600 companies accused of helping Russia's war effort, a 50 percent jump in the number of firms already under EU sanctions.