EU: The Italian Prime Minister has expressed his regret to the German Chancellor for comparing a German politician to a Nazi concentration camp guard.
Mr Silvio Berlusconi's remark caused uproar in the European Parliament and across Europe, leading Mr Gerhard Schröder to demand a full apology in parliament yesterday morning.
"He expressed his regret to me . . . I told him that for me at least, the matter is closed and that everything else must be cleared up in the European Parliament," Mr Schröder said after a telephone conversation with Mr Berlusconi yesterday evening. Mr Berlusconi last night however added in a statement that he had been offended by the German MEP.
Mr Berlusconi had declined to apologise on Wednesday for suggesting that Mr Martin Schulz, a member of Mr Schröder's Social Democrats, would be suitable to play a concentration camp guard in a forthcoming Italian film about the Nazis. He said the remark was meant as a joke which lost its ironic tone in the translation.
Berlin reacted within hours on Wednesday evening and summoned the Italian ambassador to the Mr Schröder's office in the Chancellery, an unusual step that reflected the seriousness of the affair. The Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome called in the German ambassador to say that Mr Schulz had caused "unacceptable offence" by attacking the Italian Prime Minister.
Yesterday morning in parliament, a grave-faced Mr Schröder demanded a full apology from Mr Berlusconi. "This comparison is inappropriate and completely unacceptable in content and in form," Mr Schröder said to applause. "I expect that the Italian prime minister will apologise fully for this unacceptable comparison."
Mr Schulz said he was happy with the outcome and he assumed Mr Berlusconi would clear things up with Mr Pat Cox, the president of the European Parliament.
A spokesman for the European Commission was initially unwilling to comment on the affair but after being pressed by journalists,admitted that Mr Berlusconi's remarks had sparked a "very serious incident".
"Naturally, everybody here and everybody in the Commission would have preferred that it had not happened," said Mr Reijo Kemppinen, chief spokesman for the Commission.
Mr Schröder expressed his determination to put the episode behind him. "It is now in the interests of Europe that the European presidency be crowned a success."
Germany's newspapers reacted with horror to Mr Berlusconi's jibe. The Berliner Zeitung said the incident was pure Berlusconi. "That's Silvio Berlusconi in a nutshell. You don't need to know anything more about him."
The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung condemned Mr Berlusconi's comments but said Europe had too much to do in the coming months to waste time attacking him.
As is often the case in Italy, the slant given depended on the newspaper's political allegiances. What for centre-left leaning La Repubblica was "a political storm" provoked by Mr Berlusconi's ill-judged remarks became, for the Berlusconi family-owned Il Giornale, a "Franco-Germanic conspiracy against Italy".
La Repubblica reported Mr Cox was so taken aback that he greeted Mr Berlusconi with the following pithy post-news conference comment: "Silvio, what the f..k have you done?"
"In his ranting and raving, every day more tragic and more unstoppable, Mr Berlusconi yesterday smashed into the rock face of Europe, blown against it by his lack of institutional culture," La Repubblica added.
In contrast, Il Giornale argued that it was not so much Mr Berlusconi who had made a show of himself with his Nazi jibe but rather the European Parliament which had lowered itself with an undignified attack on the Italian Prime Minister.
News bulletins on the Berlusconi-owned Canale 5, the flagship of his commercial TV empire, adopted a low-key tone in reporting the Strasbourg fracas, with the midnight news suggesting the attack on Mr Berlusconi had "come as no surprise" since the build-up to the Italian presidency had been coloured by unfavourable reporting in the foreign media.