Berlusconi: 'Institutional crisis' looms, warn MEPs

Italian leader, Silvio Berlusconi’s “insulting” comments to German MEP, Martin Schulz, have provoked an “institutional crisis,” according to the head of the European Parliament’s Socialists, Enrique Baron Crespo.

“We are talking about an institutional conflict here,” Baron Crespo told journalists in Strasbourg, adding that he was seeking a formal apology from the Italian leader. 

He has until midday on Thursday to apologise.

Berlusconi created chaos in the European Parliament on Wednesday when he said that German Socialist,  Martin Schulz, could play a lead role in a film about a Nazi concentration camp.

Later defending his comments as “ironic”, Berlusconi refused point blank to apologise for his reaction.

“I don’t think we will be able to continue working with the Council as if nothing had happened,” warned Baron Crespo.

“The President of the Council has insulted the European Parliament.”

But he later clarified his position to say that he did not intend to “paralyse” the work of the European Union.

We have never hidden our criticism, “but we do not want the Italian Presidency to be a failure,” said the senior MEP.

If Berlusconi refuses to back down, Baron Crespo has called on parliament’s president, Pat Cox, to raise the issue at the first extraordinary Council summit in the autumn.

The man at the centre of the furore, Martin Schulz, told journalists that he did not take Berlusconi’s comments as a personal insult but that his claims of “irony” did not befit the leader of a country with a fascist history.

Schulz sparked the incident by telling Berlusconi he was responsible for polemic comments on asylum by right-wing Italian minister, Umberto Bossi.

“What this man does is worse than anything that this parliament has said against Austria and the membership of the Austrian People’s Party in the government,” he argued.

Bossi’s comments and speeches were “incompatible with the EU’s charter of fundamental rights,” he said.

Schulz also alluded to the conflict of interests caused by Berlusconi’s vast media empire and criticised former parliament president, Nicole Fontaine, for prolonging a decision on Berlusconi’s immunity when he was an MEP.

But the German denied that his comments were meant as a personal insult to Berlusconi.

The Italian leader’s retort that the whole of Italy had been attacked betrayed Berlusconi’s “psychological background,” said Schulz. 

“The president in office of the Council has caused very heavy damage.”

“If he loses his temper at such a small thing I wonder what will happen in the future,” he added. 

Berlusconi has left uproar in his wake following the initial goodwill of his speech to the parliament on Wednesday morning.

MEPs from all political persuasions have been queuing up to express their outrage over his Nazi jibe. 

“Mr Schulz’s speech may well have been designed to provoke. It is regrettable that Mr Berlusconi rose to the bait and later compounded his difficulties by refusing to withdraw words which debase the Presidency of the Council and offend Europe,” said Liberal leader, Graham Watson.

In a joint statement, leaders of the Greens/EFA group, Monica Frassoni and Daniel Cohn-Bendit denounced Berlusconi as “unfit to represent the EU.”

“To make light of a bad joke against MEP Schulz in the way that he did, and to so arrogantly refuse to excuse himself, means that he has understood nothing of the fifty years of efforts to overcome the wounds of facism and the war,” they said.

Schulz confirmed that leader of the centre-right EPP group, Hans-Gert Poettering, had personally expressed “extreme regret” and “total rejection” of the comments.

 

 

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