According to EU rules and tradition the oldest parliamentarian gets to be the president of the European Parliament for one day, until the new president is chosen. Controversy has arisen because there is a great possibility that the 80-year-old extreme right winged French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen will have the honour on the 14 of July, the opening session of Parliament. If this president of the Front National gets elected for a new mandate he’s the likely candidate.
Le Pen has repeatedly called the gas chambers a minor detail in history. But he thinks he has been punished enough for his statements. He has fines built up to a total of 200.000 euro. Last January the French court condemned him to 3 months probation and a fine of 10.000 euro for publicly announcing that Word War II wasn’t that inhuman. The facts dated from 2005 when he published an article in the extreme right news paper Rivarol. This is just one of the examples. The French politician has been convicted many times for making racist or negationistic statements.
According to the social parties in the European Parliament the one day presidency of Le Pen is unacceptable. President Martin Schulz: “He’s a fascist and a negationist, for him Auschwitz is just a minor detail in history.” The leader of the socialist parties pleads for a change of the rules.
Daniel Cohen Bendit, the co-president of the Green group has his own proposition. He wants to give the honourable function to the youngest parliamentarian or the one who has the longest service record.
The Liberals don’t agree. Although they denounce all statements made by Le Pen and say they detest the way in which Le Pen practises politics the think it would be to much of an honour to change the rules especially for him. The EPV fraction is also not in favour of adaptation of the rules.
They all make a point, but at the same time none of the propistions are flawless. The one thing thay haven’t considered though is just putting an older man or woman on the list. But maybe that is just childish. All is the hands of the French voters.
(24 votes, average: 4.17 out of 5)
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It’s a symbolic gesture for one day. Perhaps if people didn’t get so worked up about it the whole thing wouldn’t be given such prominence. He can always be censored if he misbehaves on the day…
What if they change it and then see some young student get elected somewhere in the East and then come and make some speech about legalizing marijuana or something similar?
Or even more fun, the Romanian President’s top model daughter gets to make the speech and nobody can focus on her words because of the lushy make-up and designer top?
Tricky tricky..
That we should be so lucky….
Maybe drugs and sex is the best way to sell the EP to the masses…!
They just have to make a rule that for that one particular day. that they can’t make decissions or that they can overrule made discissions the next day..