Stefani resigns over 'hyper-nationalist' Germans remark

The Italian government minister who had called Germans “hyper-nationalist” arrogant blondes has resigned at the request of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The comments from Stefano Stefani, an Industry Ministry under-secretary responsible for tourism, had caused a diplomatic crisis with Germany and led Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to cancel his planned holiday to Italy.

“He has resigned from the government on my request,” Mr Berlusconi told reporters.

Mr Stefani announced his resignation during a rally in northern Italy, the Ansa news agency said.

“He has expressed regret because he was only defending Italy and its prime minister,” said Mr Stefani’s spokesman Giuseppe Pinetti, who would not immediately provide further details.

The comments had embarrassed many in Mr Berlusconi’s government, with some ministers openly distancing themselves. Recently, pressure had been mounting on the premier to remove the minister, both at home and from Germany.

“In my government, he wouldn’t have survived another hour as a junior minister,” Mr Schroeder said yesterday. “But that’s a sovereign decision for the Italian government. I have no intention of interfering.”

Mr Schroeder’s office said the Chancellor had no comment on Mr Stefani’s resignation, but added the move would not change his plans to spend his holiday in Hanover.

“Next year, however, he and his family want to spend their summer holidays once again in the house of their friend in Italy,” government spokesman Bela Anda said in a statement.

Mr Stefani had called Germany a “country intoxicated with arrogant certainties” and Germans “stereotyped blondes with a hyper-nationalist pride” in an article in La Padania, the newspaper of the anti-immigrant, occasionally xenophobic Northern League.

He had also called for an IQ test in Germany, saying it would be “necessary” and “indispensable”.

Mr Stefani wrote the piece after the first Italian-German flap played out in the European Parliament last week, when Mr Berlusconi told German MEP Martin Schulz that he would make for a “perfect” Nazi prison guard in a movie.

Mr Schulz had asked Mr Berlusconi questions over legislation that critics argue helped the premier in his legal woes.

“Schulz probably grew up taking part in noisy burping contests after drinking gigantic amounts of beer and gorging himself on fried potatoes,” Mr Stefani wrote in La Padania.

The comments turned the spotlights on the so-far largely unknown Mr Stefani, a 64-year-old goldsmith-turned-politician whose current post is his highest. The now ex-minister has a German ex-wife and, according to some media reports in Italy and Germany, a passion for German cars.

According to Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper, an apology from Mr Stefani will be published in today’s edition. The statement was released yesterday.

“I love Germany,” Mr Stefani wrote to Bild. “If, through my words, a misunderstanding resulted for many Germans, I would like to hereby apologise many times.”