Il Prof si rimangia il sì

The Italian newspaper Il Giornale last Thursday reported that Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi harshly criticised the allocation of seats in the European Parliament, adding that Italy had been "punished". He was referring to the proposal of the European Parliament drawn up by co-rapporteurs, Alain Lamassoure (EPP-ED, FR) and Adrian Severin (PES, RO), on the allocation of seats from 2009 onwards (see table on opposite page).

Then, in the midst of his recriminations, Mr Prodi reportedly uttered one phrase which, to put it mildly, was as ill-thought as it was ill-timed: "And then Malta! Six European Members of Parliament for Malta on a par with Slovenia!"

That was a gaffe, big time. Slovenia actually gets eight, not six. Mr Prodi did not mention Luxembourg, which is around Malta's size in population terms and gets six seats as well.

The new treaty, which must still be agreed at a meeting of EU leaders in Lisbon this December, fixes a limit of 750 MEPs in the European Parliament, instead of 736 as laid down in the Nice Treaty. Under the proposals approved by the Parliament, no EU member would have more than 96 seats and no state would have less than six. (Parliament now has 785 MEPs, due to the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007).

We understand that Mr Prodi may be growing a bit weary of his job and that the strain might be beginning to tell. Keeping together that crew of desperadoes in his coalition - prone as they are to start shooting at each other without warning - must be increasing the stress.

Two of our MEPs, Simon Busuttil and David Casa, immediately reacted to Mr Prodi's gaffe. At the time of the writing of this piece, we are still waiting for the others to do the same.

We imagine that Arnold Cassola, Italian Member of Parliament in Prodi's coalition, hurriedly wrote a firm but polite letter to his leader about this whole affair.

Prodi has already said yes

Last June in Brussels, the European Council at which Mr Prodi was also present, agreed after consulting the European Parliament President, to invite members "to pave the way for settling the issue of the future composition of the European Parliament in good time before the 2009 election, to put forward by October 2007 a draft of the initiative foreseen in Protocol 34, as agreed in the 2004 IGC".

In normal language, this means that the Parliament was charged with the task of deciding how the seats ought to be divided. Mr Prodi approved that proposal.

When all is said and done, one hopes that Mr Prodi's faux pas will prove in the long term to have been an insignificant incident. It is not easy to forget that in the past he had helped Malta achieve its EU membership ambitions. One must also take into account the long-standing and close relations between Italy and Malta, which have survived stouter challenges than this gaffe.

We must wait and see how Italy will react in Lisbon in December.