The Italian politician, who enraged Members of the European Parliament with his comments on homosexuals, said that children who had only a mother and no father were “the children of a not very good mother”. Equally, children who had only a father could only be “robots” and not well-rounded human beings, he said.

Yesterday Signor Buttiglione, a member of the centre-right coalition Government of Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, sought to defuse the row, saying that his comments, made at a conference at Saint-Vincent in northern Italy on the role of the family in Europe and the United States, had been taken out of context.

But his latest intervention will embarrass José Manuel Durão Barroso, the incoming Commission President, who is expected to defy MEPs this week by refusing to withdraw Signor Buttiglione’s nomination.

Signor Buttiglione’s conservative Roman Catholic views on homosexuality and the role of women in society are presenting the European Commission with its most serious political crisis for more than five years. Large sections of the European Parliament want the Italian Minister for European Affairs to be removed from the highly sensitive Commission security and justice portfolio. If Senhor Barroso fails to bow to the MEPs’ demands at a meeting on Thursday, they are threatening to use their powers to reject his entire team.

Signor Buttiglione has already been blackballed by the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee, of which he was once briefly a member, for claiming that homosexuals are sinners and that women should stay at home and breed.

However, abhorrence at one individual’s public statements has taken on wider significance. It is now a trial of strength between two of the European Union’s most important institutions — the Parliament and the Commission.

In Italy, criticism of Signor Buttiglione, a professor of political philosophy who is close to the Pope, is being portrayed as a politically correct crusade against anyone with traditional views on sexuality. Signor Berlusconi, who nominated Signor Buttiglione as his country’s commissioner, called the Parliament’s criticism “crude propaganda” by left-wingers.

MEPs insist that their objections are more fundamental. Many would accept the Italian as a commissioner, but in another post. They believe that there is an incompatibility between a politician publicly expressing personal views that are at odds with official EU policy in the area for which they are directly responsible.

Michael Cashman, Labour’s Euro-spokesman on justice and home affairs, said: “The primary issue is that many of his views are diametrically opposed to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and to Article 13 of the EU treaties.” This outlaws discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.

Yesterday, Signor Buttiglione tried to defuse the row, telling an Italian newspaper: “Single women who keep a baby and raise it when it would be easy to have an abortion are the heroines of our time. There is great moral value in making certain choices, when it is easy not to take responsibility.” He also claimed that MEPs were trying to block his nomination because of his religious beliefs. “There is a hate campaign being waged against me,” he said. “Whatever I say is being interpreted the wrong way.”

BUTTIGLIONE IN HIS OWN WORDS

‘I may think that homosexuality is a sin. This has no effect on politics unless I say that homosexuality is a crime’

‘The family exists to allow women to have children’

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