Scarlet fever and a trial: Silvio no longer immune

The Italian prime minister's famous immune systems - protecting him from illness and justice - have taken a battering in the past 24 hours. It seems Silvio Berlusconi has contracted a mild form of scarlet fever just as it is announced that he is to stand trial in three weeks' time on charges of tax fraud, after Italy's Constitutional Court decided to lift his immunity from prosecution while serving in office.

In the shorter term, the illness threatens to keep him away from the upcoming EU summit in Brussels at which the Lisbon Treaty could be signed if the Czech leader Vaclav Klaus finally drops his opposition to ratification, as expected. Berlusconi is a supporter of Tony Blair becoming the EU's first president under the terms of the treaty.

Symptoms of scarlet fever, which is caught by about 25,000 Italians every year, are a sore throat, a high temperature and rashes. All are treatable by antibiotics, and he should be fit by the time of the trial, if not for Brussels.

Berlusconi's office did not immediately comment on a report in the Corriere della Sera which claimed the 73-year-old PM may have caught the fever from one of his grandchildren. But the financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore said its political sources had confirmed the story and quoted Berlusconi as saying: "How can I go on like this?"

The fever forced the prime minister to cancel a public engagement in Abruzzo last night and seems to have put paid to his personal physician Umberto Scapagnini's claim that Berlusconi's immune system is "extraordinary".

The tax fraud trial has been scheduled for November 16, much sooner than the Italian media had expected. It is only three weeks since Italy's highest court decided that the immunity law - fast-tracked by Berlusconi within weeks of becoming prime minister in 2008 - was unconstitutional.

The media tycoon had been facing two separate trials at the time: the first involved allegations of tax fraud surrounding the purchase of TV and film rights by his company Mediaset; in the second, he was accused of bribing the British tax lawyer David Mills, husband of Labour's Olympics minister Tessa Jowell. That trial has yet to be rescheduled. ·