A DANCE WITH THE RACIEST DEVIL FROM BRUSSELS

Simon Sebag Montefiore meets Emma Bonino

"This boy here" and Emma Bonino, European commissioner for fisheries, food safety and humanitarian aid since 1995, points a long finger at me "this boy says I'm the most hated person in Britain."

In the run-up to this week's Amsterdam summit, I have spent a day of bureaucracy and bawdiness with Bonino. I am reclining on the sofa beside her mad cow doll while the commissioner greets a delegation of 12 earnest female journalists who ask their questions reverently as if they are her 12 disciples.

Then suddenly Bonino exclaims: "He says I'm hated." The disciples gasp. I wonder where they have been for the past two years. When they get up to say goodbye, each of the 12 throws me a black look, telling Bonino: "You're a heroine in Britain."

"You're a role model, Miss Bonino."

However, the commissioner is a creature of such exuberant confidence and intelligent joie de vivre that she would never kowtow to anyone. That, however, does not change the fact thatshe is our most hated commissioner and for good reason. She is loathed for her ruthless policies and her ludicrous enthusiasm for imposing federalism on Europe. But, ironically, if she was known in Britain for her peppery, mischievous, racy character, she would be our favourite.

This thin, formidable, agile birdlike blonde has all the nonchalant, raffish devilry that we admire in Ken Clarkebut with better legs.

"Do you understand why you are hated in Britain?" I ask.

"It's difficult for me. Perhaps Britons don't like ItaliansI get letters saying, 'Go back to your rotten mafiosi Italy'."

"Actually, we like Italians but we re an island race ..."

"I visited your ports but there's such a gap of information. You British think that a commissioner invents the fisheries policy at eight in the morning and implements it in the afternoon. What the commissioner proposes is what has been decided by the Council of Ministers."

"Suppose Britons don't want to join your federal Europe?"

"I agree there are too many people here making rules. Look," chair-smoking Bonino, 49, lights a cigarette, "I share your view that today there's a democratic deficit. But if Britain doesn't want it, then don't stop others. There's more than one definition of what Europe means."

"Yes there is. Maastricht."

"I believe there's no important issue that can be adequately dealt with purely on a national lever."

"So what's your hellish dream for my islands?"

She laughs again, rakishly.

"My dream, broadly speaking for my mother, is a United States of Europe," she says. Bonino quaintly regards her mother as the Eurocratic version of the man on the Clapham omnibus.

"What did your mama answer?"

"She always had a romantic attachment to Europe after world war two because it gave us 50 years of peace . . ."

"But, Emma, that peace was created by the war's independent victors, not the European Union."

Amsterdam is Tony Blair's real Euro-debut. "Being a liberal myself, I'm pleased that he runs the country," Bonino says. "But it's easy for him because most of the liberalisation of Britain has been achieved by others for 18 years. Blair's in a lucky position. All the dirty jobs have already been done."

Who would have guessed that Bonino, Italian radical, Eurocommissioner, abortion campaigner, advocate of narcotics decriminalisation, would turn out to be a fan of Thatcher's domestic policies, crediting the Tories for Blair's honeymoon?

"Does Blair have sex appeal?" I ask.

"In your country, maybe," she says, with classic Latin contempt for we Anglo-Saxons. "But what matters in love isn't looks but emotion."

It is entirely appropriate that this passionate feminist, 1960s radical brassiere burner was born in the Italian village of Bra.

"My parents were peasants. I left to go to university. In the 1970s I worked in New York selling shoes and preparing my paper on Malcolm X. I believed in the individual and that the state must let the individual keep as much privacy as possible."

"Would you like to be loved?""That's why I'm planning a tour around Britain. I like to be loved like everyone else. It's unfair. It hurts to be hated."

Love first brought Bonino into politics: the medieval experience of an illegal abortion propelled her, via a prison sentence, into the pantomime of Italian radicalism.

"Why didn't you have the baby?" I ask.

"Women who have babies are more courageous. I was 27 but in no position to take commitment."

" Regrets?"

"No. I was fulfilled by the two little girls I fostered, though they've now gone back to their families."

"The Pope called you a 'witch'?" I asked.

"I met the Pope a few years later. But we started the movement for legalising abortion. The Pope never called me a witch. We chained 'The witches are back', so a rightist newspaper called us 'The Witches'."

Bonino was elected in 1976 a Radical MP, soon joined by La Cicciolina, the hard-core pornographic actress. "When Cicciolina wanted to become an MP, I defended her right. She was no more stupid than most MPs."

Bonino attracted some criticism for saying, after the abortion, that she enjoyed "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll".

"It's just an expression not literal. I'm liberal but very conformist. But I love lo dance. I did tile waltz, mazurka, tango, twist and rock with my father. I dance whenever I can..."

"Do you want to dance now commissioner?"

"Yes. No music? We don't need music . . ."

"Have you danced with any of your fellow commissioners?"

"Oh yes, look." She handed me a photograph. "Here I dance with the Swedish commissioner."

"Have you tangoed with Sir Leon Brittan?"

"Nos yet. Never had the chance."

"As a radical feminist, were you a 1970s swinger?"

"Hardly. I lost my virginity at 27! My boyfriend said: 'Why don't we do it?' We asked a doctor who said I was sterile. So we did it. Two months later: pregnant."

"So you got pregnant the night you lost your virginity, commissioner?"

"Maybe. Bad luck, eh?"

"Exceedingly."

Bonino never married.

"You're alone now?"

She nods. "I do hope I'll fall in love again: a deep thing."

This strange mix of political correctness and outrageous Rabelaisian merriment looks at her watch. "All right, we go to meeting now. Then we dance."

We ride in the Euro-commissioner's limousine.

"Which is more important to you, Emma, sex or polities?"

"Politics per se. My lest lover gave me this unfair choice."

"Okay. But what about love or politics?"

Bonino shrugs. How does she want to be remembered?

"She helped to create the permanent tribunal against war crimes and to ban landmines."

I attend Bonino's humanitarian cabinet: 38 suave Euro-bureaucrats around a single table. Bonino dominates with tireless, imperious humorous drive.

Back in London, I call her in Rome to check something."I've been thinking about the hardest question you asked me,"she says. "You asked what I'd choose between love and politics. I have thought about it a lot since. It's the most difficult problem. Fortunately I've never found myself in such a dilemma. All I know is that I can't answer until it happens. Then I'll let you know. Ciao."