Berlusconi’s initiative fails to cut Germany down to size

Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has suggested that the European Union counts the population of each Member State according to a measure based on citizenship rather than the traditional measure of the number of residents in a country. Mr Berlusconi's idea was considered at a private meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels in September 2004, but foundered in the face of strong German opposition and advice from EU lawyers.