Democracy À la EU

Daniel Hannan blogs about the EU parliament reaction to protests:

A number of Euro-sceptic MEPs are to be fined for having demonstrated in the chamber in favour of a referendum on the European Constitution. Polish, Italian, French and Austrian MEPs are among those being punished, as well as a couple of UKIP members and my Tory colleague Roger Helmer. The fines range from £400 to £1000, and have been allocated more or less arbitrarily.

I’d missed this one. What was it that they did, that was so heinous?

No demonstration before or since has met with any such sanction. Yesterday, for example, dozens of Liberal and Green MEPs held up placards to protest about the treatment of a human rights activist. No problem there. But the sight of the word REFERENDUM was so offensive to my federalist colleagues that they sent the parliamentary ushers to tear the placards away (the poor ushers couldn’t have been politer or more apologetic) and then moved to fine the people holding them.

Ah… So the EU parliament doesn’t like the idea of the peoples of the EU having a direct say in the matter of the constitution Lisbon Treaty?

This is probably because when they are given the opportunity they give the wrong reply. However, there’s more to this than meets the eye. Daniel points out just how arbitrary this punishment is:

These fines have been dished out almost randomly. One of the Austrian members being penalised was in Frankfurt on the day of the demo. Several other MEPs who joined the protest — including a number of Conservatives, such as David Sumberg, Syed Kamall and me — have got off scot-free. Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, was so annoyed not to have been punished that he rose on a point of order in the manner of Kirk Douglas, shouting: “I’m Spartacus!”

You would have thought Farage being somewhat overtly annoying to these people would have been at the front of the queue for fines and sanctions – even if you accept that this is acceptable behaviour and I don’t. Surely a democracy allows dissenting voices to be heard? Surely? Ah, but, the EU is not a democracy…

Everyone understands what is really going on. Members are being penalised, not for having demonstrated, but for being Euro-sceptics. Such discrimination is a daily fact of life here. It is well understood, for example, that integrationist members can get away with all manner of irregularities — even with outright fraud — and face no consequences. Attack the system, however, and you risk having charges trumped up against you. One Austrian Euro MP, who had made himself unpopular by exposing the expenses fiddles of his socialist colleagues, was threatened with fines of tens of thousands of euros because he had, in effect, filled in a form incorrectly.

All of which, reminds me of Daniel’s comments yesterday on much the same theme.

Not for the first time, I was struck by how unpleasant some Euro-enthusiasts can be. They heckle and interrupt. They attack the speaker rather than the speech. They have become so accustomed to littering their interventions with references to “xenophobes”, “extremists” and “anti-Europeans” that they no longer realise that they’re being rude.

I think Daniel has answered his own question.

There is something rotten in the state of Denmark EU.