Cassola rebuts Prodi's comments on seats allocated to Malta

Arnold Cassola, the Maltese Green MP in the Italian Parliament, yesterday rebutted the comments attributed to Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi in Thursday's Il Giornale regarding Malta's number of seats in the European Parliament.

"If Romano Prodi has commented that Malta should not have as many seats as Slovenia, then he is completely wrong on various counts.

"First of all, Slovenia has eight seats and not six. The principle of a minimum of six seats and a maximum of 96 was agreed upon in June 2004, with Silvio Berlusconi signing the deal for Italy, and re-agreed and reaffirmed at last June's EU summit, with Romano Prodi himself signing this agreement," Prof. Cassola said.

However, regarding Italy's distribution of seats, Prof. Cassola said Prof. Prodi is right.

"Italy should be given the same number of seats as Britain and France (73), not only because the three countries have always had the same number since 1979 but also because Italy has two million Italians living on EU soil, outside Italy, and these are Italian citizens," he said.

Prof. Cassola's Green Party is a member of Prof. Prodi's centre-left coalition government.

On Thursday, Nationalist MEPs Simon Busuttil and David Casa expressed their surprise and disbelief at Prof. Prodi's comments saying the Italian PM had got his facts wrong on at least three counts.