The European Commission. An Italian opera buffa

The row over Rocco Buttiglione's nomination to be the European Commissioner for justice and home affairs continues

AFTER learning that he had been named as Italy's next commissioner in Brussels, Rocco Buttiglione was quoted as saying: “I may be a nobody in Italy. But in Europe I will be someone.” Prophetic - if not in the way he envisaged. A soft-spoken academic with a gracious manner and an engagingly toothy smile, Mr Buttiglione is scarcely the stuff of which scandals are made. Yet, for the past two weeks, he has been at the centre of a storm in Brussels.

On October 11th, he became the first commission nominee to be rejected by a European Parliament committee, when the civil-liberties committee voted 27-26 to reject his nomination to the justice and home affairs portfolio. The majority's ire was roused by his comment, in response to the committee's questions, that “I may think homosexuality is a sin, but this has no effect on politics unless I say homosexuality is a crime.”

The vote prompted many in Italy, not just on the right, to note that Mr Buttiglione was merely echoing papal orthodoxy. As one cardinal deplored a “lay inquisition”, Catholic commentators asked if believers could any longer aspire to high European office. They have a point. A gulf has opened between mainstream European thought on a range of social issues and the unyielding Catholicism of Pope John Paul.

Yet when Mr Buttiglione protests that he is being persecuted for his thoughts not his actions, he is being disingenuous. He is a lifelong member of a conservative organisation, Communion and Liberation, that is known for seeking to bring religious values into political life. After being made Europe minister in 2001, Mr Buttiglione astonished colleagues with a string of demands that went far beyond his remit. Within days, he had called for a ban on artificial insemination, for state funding for private schools and for payments to women who rejected abortions.

As The Economist went to press, the incoming commission president, José Manuel Barroso, appeared to be mulling a compromise that would strip Mr Buttiglione of responsibility for anti-discrimination policies. But this may not be enough. The Socialist leader in the parliament, Martin Schulz, said he wanted a “complete change in portfolio for Mr Buttiglione” as the price for not voting down Mr Barroso's entire team. His stance followed a report this week in Britain's Daily Telegraph that the commissioner-designate had been under investigation in Monaco on suspicion of money-laundering. A magistrate in Monte Carlo was quoted as saying that Mr Buttiglione had been suspected of involvement in a plot to funnel cash illegally to his party, the Christian Democrat Union of Centre Democrats (UDC), though the case was later dropped.

However, neither his Catholicism nor any alleged investigation is the best argument for questioning Mr Barroso's wisdom in earmarking the justice brief for a politician with Mr Buttiglione's friends and record. For the past four years, Mr Buttiglione's right-hand man, the head of his ministerial secretariat, has been Giampiero Catone. In May 2001, just before the election that brought Silvio Berlusconi to power, Mr Catone was arrested and jailed, accused of fraudulently obtaining government subsidies for companies he owns. He has since been charged, but not yet tried. Mr Catone says he is the victim of a “campaign of defamation”.

He is not the only senior UDC official under judicial scrutiny. The party's stronghold is Sicily. It played a leading role in helping the Berlusconi alliance take all the seats on the island in the 2001 general election. The UDC governor of Sicily, Salvatore Cuffaro, was last month charged with aiding and abetting the Mafia. He too denies all charges against him.

All of these accusations may indeed prove unfounded. But, even then, there remains perhaps the most disturbing issue of all: Mr Buttiglione's complicity in measures taken by the Italian government to enable its leader to stay one step ahead of efforts by prosecutors to have him convicted and jailed. Over the past three years the proposed future justice commissioner has sat in a cabinet that has partly decriminalised false accounting for private companies, and tried both to provide Mr Berlusconi with immunity from prosecution and to make it harder for courts to use evidence obtained abroad. In short, Mr Buttiglione's Catholicism is not the real reason for doubting whether he is the right man for the justice portfolio.

The row over Rocco Buttiglione's nomination to be European Commissioner for justice and home affairs continues.