John Lichfield: You should be cautious of this man

'Picture a man with the unctuous charm of Jeffrey Archer and the wealth and media control of Rupert Murdoch'

Silvio Berlusconi rarely goes to the Palazzo Chigi, the Italian equivalent of Downing Street, where the 50-odd previous Italian prime ministers since the war have worked. He governs the country mostly from his private, rented palazzo a few minutes' walk away, whence he also, in effect, runs his media and business empire, his political party and AC Milan football club.

To translate this into British terms, picture a man with the unctuous charm of Jeffrey Archer and the wealth and media control of Rupert Murdoch. He also owns Manchester United FC. He is both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. He has appointed his former company accountant as Finance Minister. He runs the country, amongst other interests, wearing jeans, from a Belgravia town house. It is precisely this unconventional, swashbuckling, can-do approach that Mr Berlusconi's many supporters in Italy – after years of grandiloquent, impotent, revolving-door governments – find refreshing. It is precisely this confusion of genres – a seeming inability to understand where private and public interests, and habits, begin and end – that Mr Berlusconi's critics, at home and abroad, find disturbing.

Not Tony Blair, it seems. The Prime Minister is going to Rome tomorrow for a bilateral summit with sui emmitenza. The two men will sign a joint declaration calling for more deregulation and market-opening measures in the European Union.

The Berlusconi government, elected last year, says that it feels closer, on European questions, to the "Euro-realist" Blair government than the governments in Paris and Berlin (a huge shift for a country which was always the most mystically European of the Common Market's founding members). Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party and the British press have been trying to push things even further. They champion Mr Berlusconi as a fresh, nationalistic, business-oriented voice in Europe, who will support their aversion to further, and existing, European integration. They have delighted in the fact that the Berlusconi government has made a series of seemingly Eurosceptic statements and gestures which have irritated Italy's other European partners.

The former head of the Italian parliament's foreign affairs committee, Giangacomo Migone, a centre-left politician and sworn, but urbane, enemy of the tycoon-turned-prime minister says: "You can tell your Eurosceptics at home that Berlusconi will be damned unreliable, even as a Eurosceptic. And tell the Blair government that he will be equally damned unreliable as a Euro-realist."

Italian officials, from Mr Berlusconi downwards, are now engaged in a charm offensive to reassure everyone that Italy remains broadly committed to the European dream (as indeed the vast majority of Italians still are).

What then of Mr Berlusconi's decision (in effect) to fire his pro-European foreign minister Renato Ruggiero last month? What of the mocking comments about the euro, at the delicate moment of its launch?

What of the judicially-much-investigated Mr Berlusconi's decision to place a veto (now lifted) on a Europe-wide arrest procedure? What of Mr Berlusconi's decision to block agreement on a European food safety agency in Finland on the grounds that the Italians have the better food?

Italian officials argue that they should be judged by deeds, not words. They say that there is little in the above list which is inconsistent with the kind of defence of national interests – within an overall commitment to Europe – which other countries, such as France, have pursued for years. There was a time when Italy regarded the European interest as its national interest. Europe was, in the words of one former Italian ambassador, "like the Catholic church, an ideal to be pursued; something above the complications of everyday; something abstract, something on which all parties could agree, even if they could agree on nothing else; something eternal, when Italian governments were constantly changing".

But Italy has changed and Europe has changed. The European Union is no longer abstract. It has acquired a nasty habit of insisting that its rules – from competition policy to reducing farm fraud – should be obeyed. Europe has become something real, jingling in everyone's pockets. (Despite some early problems, the euro has been accepted in Italy as smoothly as everywhere else.)

At the same time, Italy has acquired a new sense of national identity and pride. It has also, for the first time since the war, a government with a clear majority, which – like Berlusconi or loathe him – is almost certain to serve its full five-year term.

And yet most Italians remain passionately in favour of European political union (70 per cent, compared with more than 80 per cent a few years ago). They have stumped up uncomplainingly for an additional "euro" tax to help their country qualify for the single currency. It is impossible to imagine that happening in Britain; or even France or Germany.

In these altered circumstances – altered rather than transformed – any strong Italian government might have been expected to take a more assertive position, to defend its national interests, within the European Union. This, even in European terms, could be a healthy thing; certainly preferable to the old Italian habit of agreeing airily to everything and implementing nothing.

The problem with the Berlusconi government is sorting out what its motivations are. A rational defence of national interest (such as the decision to cancel the military airbus)? A tribalistic, mischievous impulse to stick it to the old, pro-European, leftist elites in Italy which Berlusconi loathes (such as his boasted, blanket approval of the United States)? Or naked defence of Berlusconi's private interests (the blocking of the European arrest warrant)?

Some Italian commentators point out that Berlusconi is above all a populist and an opportunist and a great reader of opinion polls. In Italy – unlike Britain – this places limits on how anti-European he can be.

Boris Biancheri, chairman of the Italian news agency, Ansa, and a former ambassador to Washington and London, commented: "It is not so much that Berlusconi has changed Italian attitudes towards Europe as that Berlusconi is himself a symptom of those changed attitudes. He sees politics in terms of business opportunities, of filling the niche."

Others, more critical, say that the problem is that Berlusconi has no clear road map of where he wants to go in Europe. He claims to represent a new beginning in Italian politics but his twists and turns and gaffes have simply reinforced the greatest Italian stereotype of them all: unreliability.

At best, they say, Berlusconi may turn out to be no more than an Italian Jacques Chirac, a man distrusted by other European countries but ultimately willing to play the European game.

At worst, they say, Berlusconi, may turn out to be exactly what he says he is: a man who refuses to play by the normal political rules; a man who will exploit the new Italian nationalism when it suits him but will equally take refuge in mystical Italian Europeanism when he sees some profit in it. While he is Italy's Prime Minister, Mr Blair has no choice but to work with him. He may even find him a tactically usefully ally on some practical issues.

But, strategically, Mr Blair should be cautious. How can a man who does not easily distinguish between his personal interests and Italian interests distinguish between Italy's national interests and European interests? Beware Mr Blair.