The six-month Italian Presidency of the European Union has not begun well. The outburst in the European Parliament by the country's Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi - suggesting a German Socialist would make a good Nazi concentration camp guard in a forthcoming movie - had all the diplomatic finesse of Basil Fawlty and reeked of the xenophobia of the Sun. Mr Berlusconi made matters worse by later referring to MEPs as "democracy tourists".
His subsequent retraction, interpreted generously as an apology by Germany's Chancellor Gerhardt Schröder, was somewhat less than that. Mr Berlusconi has since insisted he did not apologise but simply regretted that he had been "interpreted badly". Last night the President of the European Parliament, Mr Pat Cox, was trying to broker a proper apology to MEPs.
Mr Berlusconi is not a man used to being held to account. His autocratic, brash style is very familiar to his compatriots and now Europe's citizens, whom he purports to speak for as President of the European Council, are learning fast. What they see does not appeal.
And there is a particular irony in Mr Berlusconi's aspersion against a politician from a party which was banned under the Nazis, when Italy's Prime Minister is himself in coalition with a party led by a former self-declared fascist and one-time admirer of Mussolini, Mr Gianfranco Fini. Mr Fini gets extremely upset these days when accused of being a fascist and moved rapidly to distance himself from Mr Berlusconi - a pity that he has not sensitised the latter to the infelicity of making such charges.
The exchanges, and Mr Berlusconi's apparent determination not to mend his ways, bode ill for a Presidency with a heavy agenda. Not least among its tasks is to broker agreement between member-states on the new EU constitution, a prospect which has not been helped by Mr Berlusconi's intemperance.
One of the key issues to be resolved is whether to continue the EU system of six-monthly rotation of the Presidency, a system which small countries like Ireland have valued - and in which role they have consistently performed well. The alternative proposed by the Convention on the Future of Europe involves the appointment for 2½ years of an actual President who would represent the EU internationally. Continuity, it is argued, would give such a figure greater standing and authority than a succession of "minor" and/or "unrepresentative" prime ministers. Mr Berlusconi this week has inadvertently made that case most powerfully, as Ireland's negotiators will , no doubt, be reminded.