Romano Prodi: The re-entry man

If the commission president wants to play Italian politics, he should resign

IT HAPPENED to be this week, but it could have been any recent one. The newspaper headline said “Prodi tells Rutelli: Fassino to be spokesman”. The story reported a meeting in Strasbourg “of more than an hour” at which Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, laid down the law to Francesco Rutelli, leader of one party in Italy's centre-left electoral alliance, about who should do what.

It was the umpteenth sign that, when it comes to conflicts of interest, Silvio Berlusconi is not alone among Italian leaders. As commission president, Mr Prodi is meant to represent Europe as a whole, standing above grubby national politics. Two of his commission colleagues, Spain's Pedro Solbes and Greece's Anna Diamantopoulou, recently resigned to re-enter politics at home. This week, France's Michel Barnier returned from Brussels to Paris, to take over as French foreign minister.

Yet Mr Prodi continues to cling on to the office of president, and enjoy the prestige it confers, while leading the Italian opposition in all but name. He chaired the meeting that led to the founding of the new electoral alliance, gave the closing address at its inaugural rally, and runs it through meetings such as the one with Mr Rutelli.

This week, he went even further, treading into the contentious waters of Italian foreign policy. In a letter to Corriere della Sera, he set out the centre-left's stance on Iraq, where Italy has some 3,000 troops. If his group were in power, he wrote, “I don't hesitate to say the choice would be to put an end to [Italy's] intervention”. He called the war unjustified and illegitimate.

The Italian foreign minister, Franco Fattini, retorted that Mr Prodi's intervention was “illegitimate”. So long as he remains commission president, it is certainly unacceptable.

Article argues that if European Commission President Romano Prodi wants to stay involved in Italian politics, then he should resign from the Commission.