The UK gay rights group OutRage! is today calling for an international boycott of Romanian wine in

The UK gay rights group OutRage! is today calling for an international boycott of Romanian wine in protest against what are currently the harshest anti-homosexual laws in Europe. The move comes just three months after OutRage! activists disrupted a Romanian National Opera performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London by unravelling a huge banner with the slogan: "Romania - stop jailing queers". Peter Tatchell, OutRage!'s most famous campaigner, said: "We are hoping that it won't just be gay people supporting this boycott but everybody who is concerned about human rights."Romania is now the only country in Europe that still outlaws male and female homosexuality."Under a newly modified law, homosexual relations between consenting adults in Romania are punishable with up to five years' jail if they are conducted in public or if they are deemed to have caused a "public scandal".The law represents a relaxation of the harsher legislation in force under the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu but when it was passed late last year it was immediately condemned by OutRage! and the human rights organisation Amnesty International as still being way out of line with West- and even East-European norms."The term 'public scandal' ...could still be used to imprison consenting adults," Ivan Fischer, an Amnesty spokesman, said. "Under this law anyone could go to the police and claim to be 'scandalised' by ... the effeminate behaviour of a neighbour."The new law also makes it an offence for homosexuals to form their own associations or engage in acts of "propaganda" or "proselytising" - effectively banningtheir clubs, bars, newspapers or any other form of support.According to Mr Tatchell, the law is in flagrant breach of Romania's promise to decriminalise homosexuality following its accession to the Council of Europe in 1993 and is a serious obstacle to its ambition to join the European Union.Hopes for a genuine liberalisation of the law were raised in November when Emil Constantinescu was elected as president.

He once promised to repeal the current legislation; in office, however, he has not chosen to push the issue.Indeed, rather than liberalising the law, there are many in the country who would like to see a return to the Ceausescu-era legislation. Romania's powerful Orthodox church hasorganised mass petitions calling for the return of the blanket ban on homosexual practices, which it condemns as "the tyranny of selfish, barren passion".Many of Mr Constantinescu's political allies in the governing Peasant Party also take a hard line. In last year's debates on the law, the Peasant Party MP Emil Popescu said that "incest is preferable to homosexuality," because it "gives breeding a chance". Horia Pascu, a party colleague, claimed that homosexuality was unknown in the animal world, except among ducks, "which are known to be the most stupid among birds"..

After living a fairy-tale life of subsidies and cosy government protection for the past 15 years, Italy's dairy farmers have suddenly come face-to-face with the reality of European integration - and they don't like it one bit. Since 1982 they have been ignoring milk-production quotas imposed by Brussels and getting Rome to pick up the tab for fines they incur. But with monetary union just around the corner and Italy desperate to clean up its act so it can join the single currency on time, the tables have turned against them. A few days ago the country's 105,000 farmers were told they would have to pay their own fines for 1996 - some 370bn lire (pounds 150m) - and would be expected to stick to European production limits. The result has been a revolt, with tractors out on the roads and farmers threatening a French- style blockade of Italy's main cities. In Milan, the tractors have cut off access to Linate airport, forcing passengers to drag their luggage several hundred metres on foot.Much of the anger has focused on the same government that bailed the farmers out for years.

Umberto Bossi's Northern League has muscled in on the act, portraying the stand-off as a conflict between honest farmers and heartless bureaucrats, as has the far-right opposition National Alliance.The saga stretches back to 1982, when Rome first fell out with the European Commission on milk production. The Commission, seeking to curb over-production, set one quota and Rome, worried about its dwindling agricultural sector, unilaterally set another - thus sparking a "milk war" that lasted more than 10 years.Periodically there were attempts to resolve the crisis, but the result was always an excess of Italian milk production and a flurry of fines that the government invariably chose to pay itself. It was an unrealistic situation, but one that the farmers became comfortable with.As the commentator Giorgio Bocca wrote this week: "Farmers got the idea that the European Community was itself one enormous cow for the milking."Since the protests began last week, the centre-left government led by Romano Prodi has been pulled in both directions at once.It is desperate to clear one of the worst blots in its European copybook and relieve the public finances of a burden it can no longer afford. But the last thing it wants at a time of Maastricht-imposed austerity is a widespread outpouring of anti-European bile.Its answer has thus been to plead in Brussels on the farmers' behalf. Yesterday the Agriculture Minister, Michele Pinto, asked his European partners for a more generous quota, pointing out that under the present regime Italy would have to import more than 40 per cent of its milk. Today Mr Prodi will meet the farmers to explain the sudden reverse in their fortunes.