Italy backs down after making gaffe

The Italian government backed away from another confrontation with Berlin today in fear that German tourists would head for another nation’s beaches.

An official in Silvio Berlusconi’s government had branded Germans “stereotyped blondes with a hyper-nationalist pride” – comments that led Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to threaten to cancel his planned summer holiday in Italy.

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini today expressed his “strong wish that a statement that was unnecessary and out of line doesn’t upset in any way the traditional friendship between Italy and Germany.”

“The thousands and thousands of German tourists who have always come to Italy and who will keep coming are exceptionally welcome guests, as we are when we go to Germany,” Frattini said in Rome.

The gesture – the second Italy has had to offer in as many weeks – appeared to have worked.

The German government “noted with satisfaction” how Frattini and other Italian ministers had “distanced themselves from the unacceptable collective insult,” Schroeder’s spokesman Bela Anda said.

Stefano Stefani, an Italian Industry Ministry under-secretary, had called Germany a “country intoxicated with arrogant certainties.”

“We know the Germans well, these stereotyped blondes with a hyper-nationalist pride who have always been indoctrinated to be first in the class at any cost,” he wrote in a newspaper.

According to the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel, Schroeder’s spokesman called Stefani’s remarks an “insult to all Germans who like to spend their holidays in Italy,” including the chancellor.

“Should these comments be approved of by the Italian government and remain without consequences, the chancellor will cancel his planned vacation in Italy,” Anda said.

Following the remark, Italian resort towns from the Amalfi coast to the Alps offered their hospitality to Schroeder and other Germans, apparently concerned that the dispute might persuade big-spending German tourists to take their holidays elsewhere this year.

The row came on the heels of a German-Italian spat prompted by Berlusconi’s Nazi jibe to a German MEP in the European parliament.

Berlusconi expressed is regret to Schroeder for that remark last week and today did the same in a phone call to the president of the European Parliament, Pat Cox.