After the worrying moves against Italy’s Roma population back in the summer, it seems that racial tensions are on the rise Italy-wide. After all, if the state’s going to sanction the persecution of one ethnic minority, why not start having a crack at the rest? In times of growing economic hardship (and it’s not like Italy’s economy’s been doing too well in the last few years anyway), finding scapegoats is always popular. And so:

In recent weeks, a Ghanaian man, Emmanuel Bonsu Foster, 22, was injured in Parma in a scuffle with the police; a Chinese man, Tong Hongsheng, 36, was beaten by a group of boys in a rough neighborhood in Rome; and a Somali woman, Amina Sheikh Said, 51, said she was strip-searched and interrogated for hours at Ciampino Airport in Rome. Last month, six African immigrants were gunned down in Castel Volturno, a stronghold of the Neapolitan Mafia…

Last week, Parliament debated whether Italy was facing what newspaper headlines referred to as a “racism emergency.”

Now that the governments of Europe seem to have decided to act in tandem to stem the credit crisis (joined around the world by countries from Japan to Brazil), the economic nationalism of the 1930s that did so much to exacerbate the Great Depression seems not even to be an option this time around. Could this in turn prevent a rise in the less savoury, more personal forms of localist resentment that caused so much trouble 70 years ago? Or is Italy, just as it became the first fascist country back in the 1920s, leading the way once again? If the current economic crisis doesn’t sort itself out soon, will such attacks against “foreigners” become more common throughout Europe? It’s not like there’s not already a sizable fear and resentment of foreigners knocking around…*

* See, for example, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights‘ Annual Report for 2007 (PDF), noting a general upward trend in racist attacks EU-wide. Some of this is certainly due to increased awareness and greater levels of reporting and recording over the last decade or so, but still.

Good news for fascists today – according to the EU, it’s no longer racist to target a particular ethnic group based on folklore that suggests they’re all criminals.

Up next from Italy and the EU, fresh policies to deal with the threat of witchcraft from little old ladies with pet cats (mostly involving rivers, rocks and bonfires), special breeding programmes to provide more hunchbacks so we can rub their humps for luck to get out of the credit crunch, and a new drive to round up all Jews into ghettoes to prevent them from using their vast wealth and international network of spies and accomplices to secretly rule the world.

El Pais has more (in Spanish – or automatically translated)

Yesterday I went to my uncle’s funeral. 88 years old and alert and amusing until the day he died. I never knew that he was in the RAF during the war – back-end technical support, I believe. One of the engineers who kept the planes flying during the Battle of Britain. Not as glamorous as being a Spitfire pilot, perhaps, but absolutely vital and insanely dangerous nonetheless (messing around with bombs and ammo while surrounded by fuel tanks, often ducking German air raids while he was at it).

Last week I was down in the West Country visiting my 85-year-old grandmother. In 1940, at the age of 17, she felt the call, left the tiny hamlet in which she had spent her entire life down in a remote part of Cornwall and moved to London to train as a nurse. She hit the wards of Guy’s Hospital just as the bombs of the Blitz started hitting the streets and houses.

In the previous war, her father – my great-grandfather – had likewise signed up as soon as he could (this despite, or perhaps because of his Prussian father’s internment on the Isle of Man), being shipped out from the back-end of Cornish tranquillity to the trenches of the Western Front, and lasting all the way, through both the Somme and Passchendale.

My great-grandfather went on to become a teacher. My grandmother a housewife. My uncle an accountant. They became ordinary, everyday people again, and none of them liked to talk about their experiences. And herein lies the problem.

The recent attacks on Roma settlements in Italy and plans to fingerprint all Roma in the country have so many obvious echoes of the early anti-Jewish rumblings of inter-war Germany (and pre-WWI Austria, where Hitler gained his political education thanks to the populist likes of Schonerer, Lueger and the like, for that matter), that they shouldn’t need to be underlined. Indeed, by likening anything at all to the actions of the fascists of the 1930s/40s it’s hard not to fear slipping into hyperbole – and on the internet, of having Godwin’s Law brought up yet again.

The problem is precisely that everyone knows about the Nazis and about the Holocaust. It’s part of the education of pretty much every European child, and has been for more than half a century. In some countries, the teaching of the Second World War would even take preference over more general national histories, so important has it rightly been considered (while I was at school we spent two years on the Second World War – with not a single lesson on the British Empire). Documentaries about the Nazis are on a constant loop on the various history TV channels. History sections of bookshops are dominated by picture books and chunky tomes about the Third Reich and the chaos it wrought.

And what do we learn? That the Nazis were evil. That this was an extraordinary moment, an unprecedented time.

None of this, of course, is entirely true. There were countless precedents for nationalist aggression and the persecution of minorities, the Holocaust itself just the most devastating of centuries of anti-Jewish pogroms.

Yes, it was an extraordinary time – but the people who were involved were neither extraordinary nor, for the most part, evil. My uncle was not extraordinary, and neither was my grandmother. They just did what they felt they had to. In Germany, not all Nazi party members were extraordinary either – they were ordinary men and women caught up in an extraordinary historical moment. Just as a generation before, countless tens of thousands found themselves marching slowly through mud and barbed wire into a hail of machine-gun bullets, by the late 1930s countless tens of thousands of Germans (and by the early 1940s Austrians, Italians, French, Belgians, Dutch, Polish, Danish, Czechs, Slovaks, Finns, Greeks, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Russians and more) found themselves complicit to an ideology they were powerless, as individuals, to stop.

But none of the ordinary, everyday men and women caught up in these events – no matter which side they were on – ever liked to talk about their experiences (history not just being written by the victors, but by the leaders). Whether it’s thanks to unpleasant memories or embarrassment, so much of this vital first-hand knowledge has already been lost.

And in any case, we all prefer the broader picture – not to mention the battles, the action, the glamour of the likes of Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone. Every now and then we may go for a bit of Schindler’s List and try to grasp the true horrors – but we can’t. Because the true horror isn’t just the slaughter of innocents – it’s that people just like you and me were the ones doing the slaughtering, not just Hollywood villains like Ralph Feinnes’ Commandant Goeth. That’s something that no WWII film I’ve seen, or history lesson I sat through at school, has ever quite managed to get across.

Hitler, Goring, Himmler, Speer, Goebbels and all the rest – they were men, not monsters. But over the last six decades and more they have been progressively demonised to the extent that far from never forgetting about their crimes, their crimes have become all too familiar – a pinnacle of horror, a benchmark of evil that somehow, we feel, is so bad that it can never be surpassed.

But in reality we have focussed on their crimes because these are the lesser horror – the idea of the deaths of millions in concentration camps is far easier to process than the idea that people just like us were responsible. (An aside, but that was Tolkien’s finest achievement in The Lord of the Rings – albeit something that was entirely lost in the films – the depiction of the corruption of the noble Boromir…)

Rather than being vigilant to ensure that something like the Holocaust never happens again (which, of course, we’ve already failed in doing in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, etc. etc. etc.), we have elevated the crimes of the Nazis to such an extent that we have become complacent – we now simply assume that they will never happen again. That they can never happen again. Because we’re all keeping an eye out now. Because we’ve learned our lesson. Because the UN will do something. Because there are no longer monsters like that in the world.

But there are. There are plenty of disillusioned artists and ex-soldiers out there just like Hitler, and plenty more just like the ordinary people of every conceivable background who made up the SA and SS, just like the men and women who may not have become actively involved in promoting the fascist cause, but who did nothing to stop its advance. They’re out there in Zimbabwe. In Burma. In Sudan. And on every street in every country in the world. You may be one. I may be one. Our children may grow up just like them.

We will never forget the Holocaust and its victims. But we also need to remember who carried out the Holocaust. It was through the complicity of countless thousands of ordinary, everyday men and women. Not just those who helped in big ways or small, but by those who turned a blind eye. Countless thousands of men and women who went on to become accountants, housewives, teachers…

The Holocaust was carried out by us. This is what we must never forget. And yet still we ignore anti-Roma violence in Italy, even though they too were targets of Hitler’s death camps. Still we ignore rising levels of homophobic attacks in Poland, even though it was in that country that thousands of homosexuals were held in camps and murdered by the Nazis during the war. Still we forget about Darfur and Burma when they’re not on the telly and in the papers, and when the pop stars have stopped writing songs about them. Our promised vigilance is failing us. Despite our experiences, Europe – and the world – has become blind once again.

“On May 13, assailants burned the Ponticelli Jewish ghetto in Naples to the ground, causing the approximately 800 residents to flee while Italians stood by and cheered. On the day of the arson attacks on the Ponticelli ghetto, RAI television showing Italians in the area screaming “Jews out” was broadcast before the police were even alerted to the riot. Further arson attacks on the Ponticelli ghetto undertaken by locals have continued into the week of May 26-30, with evident impunity.”

“Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League, has… ordered that the fingerprinting of all Jews in Italy is to continue in the coming months, our correspondent says.

“Officials began taking fingerprints from Jews in ghettoes in Naples several weeks ago. Identification of those living in ghettoes in Rome and elsewhere is expected to begin soon.”

Oh, sorry… Did I write “Jews” and “Jewish” instead of “Roma”, and “ghetto” and “ghettoes” instead of “settlement” and “camps”? Whoops… In which case it’s OK. Who cares about gypsies, eh?

When will we learn? Hell, I’ve been as guilty as anyone of this – the shocking lack of mainstream media outrage and detailed coverage of the persecution the Roma are facing in Italy (even the BBC report I’ve borrowed from gives little background, without which the fingerprinting alone – in these days of global security paranoia – could seem little to get het up about) means I’ve only just got around to reading up on a situation I’ve been loosely aware of for a while. More:

“On 4th of February 2005, two Roma women were accused in Lecco for trying to steal a child. Both of them declared they were begging with no intention whatsoever of kidnapping. In order to avoid being sentenced both of them accepted the suggestion of their lawyer and pleaded guilty. Accordingly they were sentenced to 8 months and 10 days in jail. As expected the sentence was suspended. Their lawyer acknowledged publicly that the women told him they never tried to kidnap the child but they agree to follow his advice in order to avoid prosecution for begging… “Giu le mani dai nostri bambini” (Take your hands off our children) posters with a picture of a Roma have been spread all around Lombardia…

Pietro Zocconali the president of the National Association of Sociologists implied in a public statement following the incident that killing children is a practice among Roma. He claimed that Roma steal children and then sell them, “sometimes in parts”.

…On May 11 [2008], four Molotov cocktails were thrown into Romani camps in Milan and Novara.

On May 13, assailants burned the Ponticelli Romani settlement in Naples to the ground, causing the approximately 800 residents to flee while Italians stood by and cheered. On the day of the arson attacks on the Ponticelli settlement, RAI television showing Italians in the area screaming “Roma out” was broadcast before the police were even alerted to the riot. Further arson attacks on the Ponticelli settlement undertaken by locals have continued into the week of May 26-30, with evident impunity.

On June 9, Italian media reported that a settlement of circa 100 Romanian Roma in Catania , Sicily had been attacked and burned to the ground.

June 25th Italian interior minister, Roberto Maroni announced during a meeting of the Constitutional affairs committee of the Italian Low Chamber, a ‘Census’ of all ‘nomads’ in Italy . In the frame of this measure finger prints will be taken to all Roma children.

And here was me writing off Berlusconi as a figure of fun.

More from the Guardian and Fistful last week, that I really should have read and flagged up before now.

Aaaaah! Silvio… How I’ve missed you.

Italian politics had simply got a bit too dull under Prodi, what with him not holding a near monopoly in the Italian media, not trying to blatantly advance his own commercial interests through his high office, not re-writing the country’s electoral laws to give his own party an advantage, never having compared a German MEP to a Nazi concentration camp guard, having no connections to the Sicilian mafia, not bribing the husband of a British cabinet minister to help him launder money and give false evidence in a trial, and not having been brought to trial countless times for corruption, false accounting, tax fraud and the like – nor ever being found guilty of perjury in a case involving the freemasons.

Great entertainment value, is Silvio. Gloriously inappropriate as a national leader for pretty much any European country other than Italy.

(Apologies for not covering the Italian elections much, by the way – great fun, but far too complicated for a non-expert to attempt to explore in the sort of detail they deserve without spending far more time than I’ve currently got doing the research… Here’s a handy bit of background, though.)

Since the initial expansion to 25 member states back in 2004, the future of the EU has been wildly uncertain. The constitution was supposed to sort everything out but, as we all know, that little project has failed dismally. For the last three years, the European Union has been in a state of growing stagnation, with no obvious way out thanks to the various petty spats and disagreements.

In Britain – rarely a country to seek active engagement in EU politics – Blair’s been on his way out for what seems like forever. Everyone’s known that Gordon Brown was likely to succeed even before Labour failed to find a viaible candidate to oppose him. But with the UK economy beginning to show signs of faltering and discontent with the government steadily rising, few would be keen to put too much money on Brown being returned with a working majority at the next general election, now most likely in 2009. Neither Brown nor opposition leader David Cameron, in any case, are likely to focus too much on the European Union in the next few years, as the issue is simply far too contentious – and with a tight election on the cards, neither can risk alienating the electorate by engaging too closely with Brussels. Expect no EU leadership from the UK.

In Germany, despite her best efforts during her current EU presidency, Angela Merkel has made little headway in pushing through EU reform, and is also still in the tricky position of ruling via a fragile coalition that could fracture in a moment, given the right point of contention. With Poland and – especially – Russia to worry about to the east, Germany is in any case too threatened by immediate problems to really care too much about theoretical long-term development.

In Italy, as always in that perennially unstable country, the government is still on the brink of collapse. Romano Prodi may be far and away the most EU-experienced national leader, but his domestic troubles mean that no one in the wider EU can rely on him to be in office in six months, let alone the few years it will doubtless take to push through major EU reforms.

Poland, the only new member state with a large enough EU vote to be a serious contender in shaping the future of EU reform, is currently led by a pair of twin maniacs set on purging their country of anyone they dislike – be it suspected former communists or homosexuals. With ever increasing lurches towards hard right authoritarianism, Poland has firmly positioned itself as the black sheep of the European Union – largely ignored with embarrassment, the rest of the time more or less gently being chastised by the other member states. The KaczyÅ„ski twins (one as President, one as Prime Minister) have only been in power for a year and a bit, and are likely to stick around for a while, but with a new model Polish nationalism increasingly at the heart of their politics, constructive engagement with the EU is highly unlikely to be on their agenda any time soon.

In Spain, meanwhile, the only other EU country even close to being large enough to exert any influence, Zapatero’s socialist government has increasingly been coming into conflict with the right – and now faces the threat of fresh ETA attacks, following the Basque terrorist group’s decision to drop their ceasefire last week. Having allowed the naturalisation of thousands of illegal immigrants – without consultation with the rest of the EU – Zapatero is also not flavour of the week in Brussels, and the recent elections of the right-wing and more pro-American Sarkzozy in France and Merkel in Germany have destroyed his previous European strategy of forming a bloc with those two countries. While friendly with Prodi (for as long as he’ll be around), Zapatero’s anti-US and pro-EU constitution rhetoric ensures he’s unlikely to find an ally in Gordon Brown, and the brief period where it looked like Spain may have some influence over the future of the EU seems to have come to an end.

So who does that leave? Surprise surprise – the country that ALWAYS seems to shape the future of the EU… France.

Six months ago, Sarkozy’s succession was highly doubtful. Chirac seemed opposed to him, Royal looked to be gaining popularity, and there was that whole potential scandal over the Clearstream affiar lurking in the background which could easily have ended his hopes of nomination, let alone election.

Now, however, Sarkozy seems to have the most secure political position of any leader of the major European powers. By all accounts, the French parliamentary elections are going to end up a landslide for the UMP – the first time in 30 years that an sitting French government has been returned with a majority.

On the domestic front, this gives Sarkozy carte blanche to put in place pretty much any reforms he likes – be it increasing the 35 hour working week, cutting immigration, cutting taxes, reducing the civil service, or reordering the criminal justice system.

But from the European Union perspective, this double endorsement of the Sarkozy approach likewise gives him a pretty much indisputable right to tell Brussels that what he says goes. Having rejected the EU constitution, French voters have now endorsed a president and a party which proposes a “mini treaty” approach, a president who has publicly declared the existing constitution “dead”. With Sarkozy now doubly endorsed, the stake has been driven well and truly through the constitution’s heart.

French opinion can (perhaps sadly) never be ignored when it comes to reforming the EU – a fact that Romano Prodi noted this time last year when he stated that any revision of the current plans could not possibly take place until after the French elections. Notably, since Sarkozy’s election, the formerly pro-constitution Prodi has begun to back the mini-treaty idea, and has even hinted at a multi-tier Europe. Surely even the nuttily pro-constitution Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who’s been performing frantic constitutional CPR for the last couple of years, can’t try and keep the thing alive now?

What this all means, therefore, is that Sarkozy is pretty much going to be able to dictate terms to Brussels. He will get his mini-treaty – at least in some shape or other. Gordon Brown is likely to back the idea, if not the detail. So is Prodi. So will – most likely – the Netherlands, Denmark and the Czech Republic, just to name a few off the top of my head.

And so we’re about to enter into another period of delaying tactics and discussions of a new direction. Despite Merkel’s hopes of sorting out the detail this summer, the mini-treaty is unlikely to be finalised until at least this time next year – most likely some time after July 2008, when France (conveniently enough) takes over the EU presidency.

That will then give Sarkozy another four years in office to sort out the longer-term fix for the EU that is increasingly desperately needed. Hell, if he gets close to the mini-treaty he wants, he may even go one step further and try his hand at broader diplomacy, and try to reignite the old special relationship between France and Russia with Putin’s successor, scheduled to take over in March 2008. So far, the signs are good, Sarkozy offering himself as mediator, and trying to position himself firmly as an unbiased party in the US / Russia missile bases dispute. Hell, he’s even been getting drunk with Putin – surely a good sign?

Possibly, just possibly, Sarkozy could be the answer to the EU’s prayers. A strong, secure leader of one of the most influential EU member states, with a cabinet that shows he’s willing to compromise and work on bipartisan terms despite his large majority, who’s regarded as both pro-US and rationally pro-EU, who looks to be cultivating friendship with Russia, and whose very first act on becoming president was to jet off to discuss the Union’s future.

I never would have thought I’d be saying this six months ago, but Sarkozy is by far our best hope for a workable European Union. Even more shockingly, I’m coming to respect this guy quite a bit.

After his little upset Italian PM Romano Prodi’s managed to get through the vote of no confidence (winning by five votes – which considering how close in numbers the two main coalitions are is actually not quite as tight as it sounds).

In fact, so orderly has been his reinstatement that some have even raised (entirely plausible) suspicions that the whole thing was a stage-managed scam to get him more secure.

After all, having just passed a vote of no confidence he has effectively just been reassured that he has support for his proposed electoral reforms (largely designed to scrap the horrendous mess Berlusconi made of the Italian electoral system), as well as for his efforts to lead the way in reforming the EU.

But still, this is Italy. Nothing is certain in its politics, and it’s also entirely possible to take a very different view. And in any case, even if Prodi did plan this all from the start, the likelihood of him staying in office more than another year or so is pretty much minute based on the past terms of Italian PMs (not to mention the on-going contentious issues of gay rights and Afghanistan).

Which all means that if this former European Commission President wants to use his time as Prime Minister to help the EU get a version of the constitution through, he needs to move fast, because various other leading EU types are beginning to realise even more precisely why they wanted to scrap the current ways of working. It was bad enough every member state having a veto when there were just 15 – but now there are 27 it’s well nigh impossible to get anything significant through.

As such, the likes of Spain, Germany and Italy can moan as much as they like about other EU member states not being as enthusiastic as they are about the constitution, but it’s never going to get them anywhere, because it’s pretty damned obvious that several countries are less than keen on the existing text, and so are going to carry on vetoing it.

Of course, quite why Germany, Spain, Italy and the other countries that have ratified the constitution should be prevented from pressing ahead just because some other countries aren’t happy is one of the idiocies of the way the EU is still being maintained as a “one size fits all” organisation.

What the constitutional enthusiasts SHOULD be doing, if they had any sense, was proposing an alternative text that allows some countries to sign up to having an EU president, foreign minister and qualified majority voting (the key contentious issues in the current text), and others to opt out of those parts they see fit. With a bit of cunning, the details could be worked out to ensure this system works well for all – just as the Eurozone countries can operate alongside the non-Eurozone countries, all under the EU umbrella.

It’s not going to be easy, that’s for sure – but until something like this is adopted, any attempts to ratify the existing constitutional treaty are not only doomed to failure, but are also doomed to increase intra-EU resentments and tensions – perhaps to an unsustainable level. After all, why should Britain or the Czech Republic prevent Spain or Luxembourg from moving towards closer political integration? And why should Spain or Luxembourg force Britain or the Czech Republic to integrate more than they are comfortable with?

Back to the drawing board, Romano. The time you’ve got left as Prime Minister isn’t going to be long enough to get the existing treaty ratified. It is, however, long enough for you to come up with a workable proposal for a multi-tier EU that could – just could – keep everyone happy.

It would take a well-known EU-enthusiast like Prodi to get his fellow EU types to accept what would be, for the more fervent amongst them, a long-overdue public acknowledgement that the dream/bogeyman of an “ever-closer union” – the federal, political Europe that europhiles adore and europhobes detest – was not a dream, but a pipedream. Not in their lifetimes, nor yours, nor mine, nor our grandchildren’s is that ever likely to happen – and it’s about time they realised that and started acting acordingly.

So, after nine months as Prime Minister of Italy, former President of the European Commission Romano Prodi (a bit of a political hero of mine if only thanks to his refusal to ever join a political party, despite holding two such high offices) has been forced to tender his resignation after losing a key vote over The War Against Terror by just two votes. (Mr Blair? Ahem?)

Still, this is Italy – nine months as PM is actually pretty damned impressive. Ignoring the twenty-one years under Mussolini, few Italian PMs last more than a few months. Even with the gap under Il Duce, Italy’s managed no fewer than sixty Prime Ministers (some being repeats) since 1900. There have been ten since 1990 – even allowing for the strange knack Silvio Berlusconi had of holding on to power by staying in office for the best part of five years from 2001-6.

Still, Berlusconi’s first term as Prime Minister in 1994-5 only lasted eight months, so Prodi’s out-done that – if not his own first term as PM, when he managed to hold out for a whopping twenty-nine months between May 1996 and October 1998. By Italy’s standards, that’s nearly as impressive as FDR or Thatcher…

Still, with Berlusconi pretty much incapacitated through being a key defendant in a lengthy fraud trial (just one of many bits of dodginess – testified to by the fact that there’s a Wikipedia page devoted to the trials he’s been caught up in) and in rather poor health, there’s a good chance that Prodi could come back pretty swiftly, perhaps even securing a slightly more respectable win than his 49.81% to 49.74% victory in last April’s elections. (Should it end up going to an election, that is…)

But then again, making predictions about Italian politics is a mug’s game. Even if you know the way things work in Italy inside out, the complexities, alliances and resentments within the two main coalitions – Prodi’s leftish, twenty-one-party L’Unione (formerly known as L’Ulivo) and Berlusconi’s rightish, twenty-party Casa delle Libertà – are shifting so frequently that you’d pretty much need to keep tabs on every politician in the land to have any idea what’s going on. Italian politics is the butterfly effect on a national scale – there may well be some logic behind the thing, but ninty-nine times out of a hundred if someone claims they’ve worked out how it all makes sense and can work out what’s going to happen next, they’re either lying or deluded…

Update: The International Herald Tribune is (as always) rather good on this.

OK, so what have I missed while I’ve been busy?

The Centre For European Reform blog has been discussing the failure of the EU constitution and the need for a new kind of “pro-Europeanism”, in relation to that “Europe’s Story” idea to kick off debate from Timothy Garton Ash (which I strongly encourage everyone to get involved with – could be good, so I’ve made my first contribution).

Also on the future of Europe, the Financial Times’ Brussels Blog has had a couple of pieces on Britain and the EU after Blair (and the follow-up), which nicely update this piece of mine from back in July. FT Blogger George Parker is, however, almost certainly right that “Blair’s critics in Europe may one day look back at his leadership as a halcyon moment in the UK’s engagement with the EU.”

On a similar note, the Open Europe Blog asks whether Peter Mandelson will keep his job at the EU Commission under a Prime Minister Brown…

Also in the world of the EU, there’s been another proposal to revive bits of that damned constitution from French Green MEP Gerard Onesta, but it sounds like even less of a goer than previous efforts. Jon Worth has more – and doesn’t reckon Gordon Brown would ever go for it.

Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema also has some suggestions for the constitution – largely springing from the desperation of knowing that the EU is currently functioning on rules meant for 15 with a membership of 27 – and has also announced that Italy (under former EU Commission President Prodi, at least) “wants the EU to admit all the Balkan nations and Turkey as members”. Hell, at least that’d mean that Italy’s economy looks better in comparison, right?

Italian Minister of the Interior Giuliano Amato has weighed in to the constitutional debate too, sensibly suggesting “let us not wonder whether we need a constitution. Let us ask ourselves if the questions outlined in Laeken are still valid, if the constitutional treaty provides adequate answers and if new responses are necessary.”

Meanwhile, further east and south, nothing’s changed in Turkmenistan – and although that Economist article was written before the election (“blatantly falsified” according to Pravda), as Registan points out, the outcome was such a foregone conclusion that the post-match analysis could easily have been written weeks ago. The only question is, can the new President ever hope to get as nutty as his predecessor, the god-like Turkmenbashi the Great?

Sticking with the Economist and the former USSR (I’m still in a post-Soviet mindset at the moment, unsurprisingly), Edward Lucas on the opposition to Vladimir Putin, which features an interesting – but important – line about old Alexander Litvinenko: “The Litvinenko murder was a disaster for the Kremlin.” You see, a lot of Litvinenko’s case against the Russian security services for their alleged role in planting the apartment bombs that killed hundreds in Russia in September 1999 and kicked off the second Chechen war is simply that the Chechens had the most to lose from launching terror attacks. Same goes for the Kremlin with killing Litvinenko, by my reckoning. Before his death he was just a random conspiracy theorist. After his death he became a martyr, his death itself seemingly proving that his theories about the murderous nature of the Russian regime were true. (They almost certainly are, by the way, but still – I very much doubt that Putin’s lot ordered his asassination…)

It’s all been kicking off with Russia in the last couple of weeks: Is there going to be a new Cold War? Who can say? Mmassive military expansion never does sound good – but don’t believe the hype…

Back west, the French presidential election is hotting up, with Royal launching her manifesto – but she’s now lagging 4-8% behind, having been neck and neck with Sarkozy towards the end of last year, when I made my prediction she would win… Will the huge surge in voter registration be enough to give her back a chance? Should she even get a chance? Methinks Stanlavisbad may not be the only one starting to think Sarkozy’s the better choice…

Then a bit more on the future (and past) of Europe, as that 50th anniversay of the signing of the Treaty of Rome gets ever closer. Via Kosmopolit comes a .PDF from the European Policy Centre looking at the various challenges facing the EU. Articles include French conservative MEP Alain Lamassoure on “Relaunching Europe after the constitutional setback”, the head of the Paris Political Studies Institute’s European Centre, Professor Renaud Dehousse on “Can the European institutions still be reformed?”, Paul Gillespie of The Irish Times and openDemocracy on “Would today’s leaders still sign the Treaty of Rome?”, and many more. Looks to be an interesting read.

That should do it for now, I think…

Phil Edwards has yet another of his handy round-ups of what the hell’s going on in Italian politics. Because, as he points out, there’s always something going on in Italian politics – and generally speaking, it’s a bit mad, from what I can tell…