European Parliament's law
of unintended consequences

Egg aimed at Jean-Marie Le Pen (left) hits
Ciriaco De Mita (right)

On 14th July the newly elected Members of the European Parliament took their seats in Strasbourg for the opening session of the new Parliament.

Throughout the Parliament's history the honour of chairing this opening session has always fallen to the oldest MEP, but Europe's rulers desperately changed the rules a few months ago, when it became apparent that the oldest MEP this year would be the controversial French nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen.

...Yet although Le Pen was indeed re-elected when the democratic dice were thrown last month, the oldest MEP turned out to be the former Italian Prime Minister Ciriaco de Mita, who thus misses out on an honour which would have capped his years of blameless service to Europe's political establishment.

De Mita had miraculously survived decades of close involvement with the most scandal-ridden party in the democratic world - Italy's Christian Democrats - but has now been punished for someone else's thought-crime. The political egg aimed at Le Pen hit de Mita (born four months earlier) full in the face!

Le Pen, leader of France's Front National and an MEP since 1984, was given a three month suspended prison sentence for daring to describe the German occupation of France during the 1940s as "not particularly inhuman."

He had earlier been condemned for describing the "Holocaust" as a "detail of history".

Such sentiments are now prohibited in France under the notorious Gayssot Law.

But as Europe's politicians have discovered, once one begins to change traditional rules of debate it can have unexpected consequences!