Dublin

SOFIA: Bulgaria's parliament voted on Friday to bar the government from signing bilateral agreements with other European Union countries on readmitting migrants who arrived in Europe via the Black Sea state.

The national assembly took the step after Prime Minister Boyko Borissov asked parliamentary groups to adopt a joint decision on curbing migration.

Romania and Ireland support the project to strengthen the European design, focusing on a European Union that is closer to its citizens, Romania's Minister-delegate for European Affairs Victor Negrescu said at a meeting in Dublin on Wednesday with Helen McEntee, state minister for European affairs with Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Hundreds of refugees stranded in Greece have to put up with long delays in reuniting with their relatives in other European countries.

A number of passengers received medical attention after a Ryanair flight from Dublin to Croatia was forced to make an emergency landing in Germany.

The flight to the coastal city of Zadar landed at Frankfurt-Hahn airport at around 11.30pm due to an in-flight depressurisation.

Oxygen masks were deployed and a "controlled descent" was initiated.

Sofia is ranked 18th among 150 cities in the world with the fastest rise in prices of housing, according to an international report by the consulting company Knight Frank.

As European leaders gathered on Thursday in Brussels for a two-day summit with the divisive issue of immigration topping the agenda, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is reportedly poised to sign a deal with Germany for the return of migrants and refugees to Greece. 

As EU leaders met in Brussels for a crunch summit on Thursday and Friday to discuss migration among other issues - and following rows in Albania over whether its government had agreed to host processing camps - Bosnia and Montenegro have stepped in to say they will also not host such centres.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras expressed willingness to conclude a deal with Berlin to return migrants seeking asylum from Germany. He said this in an interview with the Financial Times, quoted by the TASS agency.

While the Croatian media reported that about a million people watched Croatia's national football team beat Nigeria 2-0 in Russia last Saturday, football fans on the streets, in pubs and in Russia are not nearly so united - with many of them boycotting the games out of continued anger with the country's football federation, the HNS.

With Bulgarian Minister of the Interior Valentin Radev as Chair, the ministers of the interior of the EU Member States today took stock of the progress made by the Bulgarian Presidency on the reform of the Common European Asylum System.