After decades of corruption, crony politics and bureaucratic authoritarianism, it takes quite something to disgrace the presidency of the EU. But Romano Prodi has just managed it. Stung by suggestions in an article authored in the Financial Times by the heads of the World Jewish Congress and the European Jewish Congress that the EU Commission is anti-Semitic, Prodi whines that he has been “forced” to suspend preparations for a forthcoming conference on anti-Semitism. In fact, the criticism of the Commission contained in that article did go too far. Much of the Brussels regime’s sometimes appalling behavior is explained not by anti-Semitism, but by the lethal combination of a peculiar form of post-colonial guilt (with Israel as a proxy for the West) and the desire to appease the EU’s Muslim minority. Nevertheless, if Prodi felt the criticism was unfair, the proposed conference would have been the perfect venue to say so. By “suspending” plans for the conference (imagine the row if Berlusconi had done this), the petulant (and wildly over-promoted) Prodi has done nothing other than dig himself a deeper hole and remind us yet again that, if there’s one thing the EU Commission cannot stand, it’s debate