Buttiglione is a better European than the people who dumped him

ALTHOUGH he has just been denied the justice portfolio in the European Commission, Rocco Buttiglione shows no rancour.

"I am sad because I think I would have been a good commissioner," he told me. "I think I have suffered injustice. But Socrates said it was better to suffer injustice rather than do injustice."

The Italian Minister for European Affairs is philosophical about what happened. But his downfall has raised a number of disturbing questions about the European Union. Its capacity to accommodate different viewpoints and ethical systems is now seriously in question. But the Buttiglione affair may reveal something worse a deep-down disrespect among European parliamentarians for the law of the union and the proper role of member states.