Breaking News | Forum | UK News | USA News | World News | Political News | Sci-Tech News | War & Terrorism News | Sports News | Multimedia | Set Homepage

Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Discuss this report in the RINF forums >

Four British MEPs have been fined hundreds of pounds for staging an EU treaty referendum protest in the European parliament.

The president of the European parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, has docked the allowances of MEPs involved in the disruption of the parliament last December.

Dozens of MEPs, many of them from the Conservative party and the UK Independence party, disrupted business in the parliament in Strasbourg by heckling at and protesting against EU leaders who signed the new EU charter of fundamental rights.

As Pöttering, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission, and the Portuguese prime minister, José Socrates, signed the charter - which Britain says will not apply in the UK - the British-led band of Europhobic MEPs unveiled banners and T-shirts demanding a referendum on the EU treaty.

Nine MEPs face sanctions as a result, including British Conservative MEP Roger Helmer, independent MEP Jim Allister and Ukip’s Roger Knapman, who will all lose three days’ allowance. The MEPs’ daily allowance is €287.
Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom learned he will be fined two days’ allowance for his part in the fracas.

Gary Titley MEP, Labour’s leader in Europe, denounced the protest: “I hope we have seen the back of those bully-boy tactics. Democracy is about respecting each other.”

Bloom said: “A quarter of a million people voted for me to protest against the EU and I’m not going to stop doing that because a few Euro-nationalists decide to take away my pocket money.

“I was proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with MEPs from across Europe to protest at the repulsive behaviour of the European parliament.

“It’s probably hard for these chaps to understand because they’re a bit tight, but the people they have made suffer with these proposals are the small charities because that’s who I give my allowances to.”

Knapman said he was too long in the tooth to be told what to do by a German president.

Hélène Mulholland

Discuss this report in the RINF forums >

Have Your Say: UK MEPs fined after EU treaty protest

RSS TrackBack URL

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Breaking News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Loading ...

ADVERTISEMENTS

SITE MAPS

7/7 Afghanistan Alternative-Energy Art BBC Big-Brother Bilderberg Biometrics Bush CIA Climate-Change Cover-Up Cults Culture Database-State David-Hicks David-Ray-Griffin Democrats Demos Drugs Education EU False-Flag FBI Fraud Free-Speech Freemasons G8 Globalization Guantanamo Health-News History ID-Cards Internet Iran Iraq Israel Law Marches MI5 MI6 Microsoft Military MoD Money Music NASA Neocons NSA Oil Pakistan Podcast Police-State Propaganda RFID RINF Rumsfeld Science Secrecy Security Slavery Space Sports Spying Stephen-Lendman Technology Terrorism Tony-Blair Torture TV UK-News UN USA-News Video Voting Warfare White-House Wolfowitz World-News Yahoo
2003 - 2005 Archives | 2005 - 2007 Archives | 2007 - 2008 Archives | Current Archives | Past Version