Charlemagne: Burlesquoni

Date: 12/07/03

Behind Silvio Berlusconi's antics, has Italy's attitude to the European Union changed more deeply?

STRANGE as it may seem, there was a time when European federalists looked keenly forward to Italy's presidency of the European Union. The Italians have traditionally been among the most ardent promoters of European unity. The EU traces its origins to the Treaty of Rome in 1957. And it was during an Italian presidency in 1990 that Margaret Thatcher was cornered at a summit and forced to agree to the negotiations that led to the Maastricht treaty and thence to the creation of a European currency and foreign policy. From the federalist viewpoint, another Italian presidency looked ideal for the final stage of negotiations, starting in October, to clinch a European constitution.

But the federalists had not counted on Silvio Berlusconi. Rather than start the Italian presidency with a renewed drive towards European unity, Mr Berlusconi sparked a row with Germany that is still smouldering. His comparison of a hostile German MEP to a Nazi concentration-camp guard was incendiary enough; his half-apology failed to dampen things down; and then Stefano Stefani, a junior minister, re-ignited the flames by accusing German tourists of being “stereotyped blondes with ultra-nationalist attitudes” and of aggressive behaviour on Italian beaches. To display his annoyance, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder this week cancelled his Italian summer holiday.

All very elevated, no doubt. But Mr Berlusconi's threat to the European dream goes well beyond his remarkable lack of diplomacy or even the alleged threat he poses to Italian democracy through his power over the media and his war with the judiciary. He has also changed his country's traditional European policy. While his predecessors stressed the goal of ever closer political union, especially among the EU's original members, Mr Berlusconi has championed the idea of enlarging the club, suggesting that even Russia and Israel might one day join it - a notion that the ever-closer-union crowd regard either as crazy or as deliberate sabotage. He has insisted that Italy will be more assertive in fighting its corner in the EU, provoking a series of rows over issues like fines on Italian farmers and the siting of a European food agency. Senior ministers in his government have even cast doubt on whether the single currency will survive.

Perhaps most important, Mr Berlusconi seems more instinctively drawn to the United States than to Italy's time-honoured European partners, France and Germany. In the run-up to the Iraq war, he was one of eight European leaders who, along with the British, Spaniards and a clutch of central Europeans, signed a letter backing the United States. Partly as a result, he has poisonous relations with the German and French leaders and gets on famously with George Bush.

These changes in Italian foreign policy have coloured European reaction to the great Berlusconi gaffe. Much of Europe's left seems to regard the Italian leader's pro-Americanism as inseparable from his alleged corruption. By contrast, Britain's Eurosceptic right is sorely tempted to ignore all those unsavoury allegations (“Aren't all Italians like that?”) and to embrace the Italian prime minister as one of their own. Neither side, however, seems to have worked out whether the changes in Italy's European policy are simply a quirk of Mr Berlusconi's personality or instead signify something more profound.

The Italian left is inclined to dismiss the Berlusconi policy on Europe as governed by the same instincts as his domestic policy. “Europe is a place where laws come from”, says one politician, “and he doesn't like laws.” It is certainly true that one EU policy that has the Italian leader particularly agitated is the effort to set up a pan-European arrest warrant to deal with cross-border crimes, including corruption. Mr Berlusconi has warned his European colleagues that such a scheme would encourage “red judges” to pursue political vendettas; one of his ministers speculated recently that one of the first targets of a European prosecutor might be Mr Berlusconi's own business empire.

But whatever Mr Berlusconi's motives, there has also been a genuine ideological shift by parts of the Italian right. The Northern League, junior partners in the ruling coalition, are now strongly anti-European as well as anti-immigrant. Some senior ministers in Mr Berlusconi's team, like Giulio Tremonti, the finance minister, and Antonio Martino, the defence minister, are also sceptical of the pieties of the European project. Both are fans of Lady Thatcher and tend to see the EU as the producer of pointless regulation and ill-conceived political schemes.

Going against a strong old grain

It is notable that some senior Italian politicians are thinking this way. But it probably does not reflect a real change in the country at large. Most of Italy's ruling class remains solidly “pro-European”. This month the Senate voted 212-2 to endorse the proposed EU constitution just produced by a convention in Brussels. Italian public opinion, unlike Mr Berlusconi, was strongly against America's war in Iraq. And pan-European opinion surveys still consistently show that Italians have more faith in European institutions - and more desire for political integration - than most other Europeans.

If top European politicians continue to treat Italy's prime minister like a skunk, more Italians may turn against the EU, particularly since Mr Berlusconi's media like to portray insults aimed at the boss as slurs on the Italian nation as a whole. But it is equally possible that Mr Berlusconi himself may be seriously damaged by his rows with the Union. Many of the criticisms of the prime minister that are never fully aired in Italy - or are dismissed as part of a left-wing plot - take on an extra force when relayed by the European press. Isolating your country within the EU is politically dangerous too. It helped destroy Mrs Thatcher (as she then was), even in a country as naturally Eurosceptic as Britain. It would be even more hazardous for Mr Berlusconi, in a country as historically warm to the EU as Italy.

Commentary feature: Behind Silvio Berlusconi's antics, has Italy's attitude to the European Union changed more deeply?

• Primary Source