EU:Italian prime minister Romano Prodi has threatened to block a controversial plan to redistribute the number of seats available at the European Parliament from 2009.
But he said yesterday the issue should not affect European leaders' attempts to get a political agreement on the proposed EU reform treaty at a meeting in Portugal next week.
"This [ issue] has got nothing to do with the treaty itself, the treaty can be approved . . . without any impact of the number of seats in the parliament," Mr Prodi said after meeting European Commission president José Manuel Barroso in Brussels.
European leaders fly to Lisbon next week to try to find an agreement on the EU reform treaty, which will change how decisions are taken at the EU.
The distribution of seats at the parliament is just one of several outstanding issues that need to be cleared up before member states can achieve a political agreement.
Poland also has several outstanding problems with the text, particularly the voting system at the council of ministers, while Austria has also sought an adjustment.
But Italian objections to the distribution of seats at the parliament could threaten to reopen the sensitive institutional agreement. For example, Mr Prodi's attempt to postpone the allocation of MEP seats until after the reform treaty is agreed is unlikely to be accepted by states such as Spain, which emerge as big winners from the plan.
Under the plan devised by French MEP Alain Lamassoure, which will boost the total number of MEPs at the parliament to 750, instead of the 736 seats envisaged under the Nice Treaty, several states emerge as clear winners.
Spain pockets four extra MEPs while France, Sweden and Austria all pick up two additional seats.
Britain, Poland, Portugal, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Latvia and Sweden all get one additional MEP from 2009, when compared with their entitlements agreed in the Nice Treaty.
Rome is angry because it has not managed to scoop any of the additional MEP seats that have become available.
Italy's EU affairs minister Emma Bonino said last week the plan was "unacceptable" because it unfairly penalises Italy because it is based on each country's total population rather than on the number of citizens - or voters - thus favouring countries that have higher immigration rates, like France and Britain.
MEPs will vote on the Lamassoure report today with Italian MEPs likely to vote against the strategy. But a final decision on the implementation of the plan must be agreed by unanimity by EU leaders.
The Irish Government, which lobbied unsuccessfully to get one of the additional seats, is also unhappy with the report. But it has not threatened to veto the proposal at the upcoming meeting of EU leaders.