(ROME) - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday defended Italy's "benevolent" attitude towards immigrants during a joint news conference with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

"If there is an open country, which regards with benevolence people who have taken the courageous decision to come here, sometimes risking their lives, it is Italy, which itself has a long history of emigration," Berlusconi said.

A decision by Berlusconi's centre-right government to have security forces fingerprint Italy's minority Roma, or gypsies, sparked outrage at home and in Brussels.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, a member of the right-wing Northern League party, which is part of Berlusconi's centre-right coalition, announced the policy on June 26.

While gypsies have been fingerprinted in northern Milan and southern Naples, authorities in Rome are opposed to the policy and will not fingerprint Roma in and around the Italian capital in their census to begin this week, the ANSA news agency reported.

Last Thursday, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on Italy to stop taking gypsies' fingerprints, which it said "would clearly constitute an act of discrimination based on race and ethnic origin."

The Italian government slammed the resolution, defending the policy as a means of protecting children against exploitation by their parents.

The fingerprinting responds to a "need to know who lives here," Berlusconi said on Tuesday, adding that the new policy was aimed at helping to ensure that children go to school.

"But we must turn away (foreigners) who come to Italy to commit crimes," he said, adding: "About 40 percent of people in prison are foreigners."

Barroso, for his part, praised Italy's "traditions of humanism and solidarity" as well as its "very good cooperation" with the European Commission on immigration issues.

"I'm sure a solution will be found in keeping with the great humanitarian and Christian traditions of Italy," he said.

"I have full confidence in (Italy's) democratic principles," he said, while adding that the Commission had "the duty to assess the compatibility of any change in the law" with EU norms.

Maroni held talks with EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot on July 7 and promised to send him a report before the end of the month explaining the government's actions and what it plans to do next.

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