Prodi Aide Hits Out at 'ignorant' British Minister

The president of the European commission, Romano Prodi, has angrily dismissed a call by the Foreign Office minister, Denis MacShane, to give his full attention to Europe or resign.

Dispensing with the usual diplomatic pleasantries, Mr Prodi's political adviser, Marco Vignudelli, said Mr MacShane, the minister for Europe, was "ignorant".

Downing Street and the Foreign Office also distanced themselves from Mr MacShane. There was undisguised exasperation within the government that he had spoken out. According to one official, Mr MacShane was given a "real bollocking" for his unauthorised remarks.

The row marks the end of a bad week for the minister, who also had to apologise to Muslims in his constituency for offending them in comments on the war on terrorism.

Mr Vignudelli, speaking to reporters in Tunis yesterday, fumed over Mr MacShane's comments to the Guardian that the EU commission president should make up his mind whether to devote himself to Europe or to stand as an opposition leader in the next Italian general election.

Mr Vignudelli said: "It is a disgrace that someone is offending the president of the European commission without the slightest knowledge of his work diary. All you have to do is look at the president's diary to understand that he works without stopping for the European commission, from morning to night."

He added: "I have heard about that minister in the Blair government - whose name I can't remember - who passes judgments without knowing what he's talking about. Clearly he is so ignorant about European questions that he has not even realised that this issue was completely resolved and clarified, to president Prodi's full satisfaction, at the recent session of the parliament at Strasbourg."

Italian Euro-MPs hostile to Mr Prodi raised in the parliament last month whether he intended to remain in the commission or resign early to fight the general election. He assured them that his future lay with the commission.

A Downing Street spokeswoman, pressed on the issue yesterday, stuck to a carefully-prepared formula: "We have no criticisms to make of Mr Prodi." The use of "to make" is significant. Translated from diplomatic-speak, it means that Downing Street and the Foreign Office privately share Mr MacShane's views of Mr Prodi's tenure, but it is a mistake for ministers and officials "to make" such views public.

Asked whether Mr Blair still had full confidence in Mr MacShane, the spokeswoman replied: "I'm sure he does."

The row comes at an awkward juncture, in the run-up to next Friday's summit to decide on a future constitution for Europe. The prospects for agreement look bleak, with key issues still unresolved.

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the architect of the new constitution, warned yesterday that it would be better to have no deal than a bad one. The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, has expressed the same view.

The summit, chaired by the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is the deadline for finalising talks on a constitution which rewrites the rules, streamlines procedures and redistributes power before the union expands to 25 members next May.

"We would rather do without a constitution than have a bad one," Mr Giscard told MEPs and national parliamentarians in Brussels. "A mutilated constitution would weaken the faith of Europeans in the future of Europe. It cannot be amended without destroying its balance."

Mr Berlusconi urged Spain and Poland to make concessions in their demands for changes to the constitution.

Diplomats said last night it was hard to see how it would be possible to resolve deep differences over a voting system adopted at the Nice summit in 2000, which gives Spain and Poland power far disproportionate to their populations.

The only obvious solution is to keep the current system and agree to review it later, probably in 2009. Germany, however, is strongly against this.