World Jewish News

Italian MP Fiamma Nirenstein: ''I don't think their membership suits the values of the Council of Europe - an organization aimed a promoting the culture of human rights and tolerance."

Council of Europe Assembly considers banning two Greek and Hungarian extreme-right members

The parliamentary assembly of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe is considering a ban on some of its extreme-right members if they are affiliated with parties that are considered “neo-Nazi, racist and anti-Semitic".
At the opening plenary session of the assembly on Monday, over 30 MPs expressed their support to the request, presented by Italian MP Fiamma Nirenstein, to challenge, according to the Rules of Procedures of the PACE, the credentials and the committee membership of Greek MP Eleni Zaroulia and of Hungarian MP Tamas Gaudy-Nagy.
The initiative concerns the membership of the two parliamentarians who belong to two neo-fascist, racist, anti-Semite parties: the Hungarian Jobbik Party and the Greek Golden Dawn Party.
The request to comply with the rules of procedure of the Council of Europe will be examined by the Council’s Committee on Rules of Procedure, Immunities and Institutional Affairs.
Nirenstein declared: "The positions expressed by the two MPs are not compatible with rule 3 of the Statute of the Council of Europe, which asserts that every member must accept the principles of the rule of law and of the enjoiment by all persons within its jurisdiction of human rights and fundamental freedom, and collaborate sincerely and effectively in the realisation of the aim of the Council…”.
Both the MPs express a political culture which discriminates and persecutes those whom they consider different, she said.
Eleni Zaroulia declared in the Greel parliament last october that the immigrant are "subhuman" and Tamas Gaudy-Nagy spoke about "the Holocaust industry" as a tool in the hands of the Jews to control the world, during a conference on anti-Semitism in the Council of Europe.
«I don't think their membership suits the values of the Council of Europe - an organization aimed a promoting the culture of human rights and tolerance, » Nirenstein, who recently announced she was leaving Italian politics and making aliya (immigration in Israel), said.
«I think we have opened here a fundamental reflection on a problem connected to the growth in Europe of neo-fascist parties and of a social diffused culture of hate and racism. no democratic parliament should accept them".
Under the Assembly rules, the committee could ratify the credentials or not to ratify them. It could also to ratify the credentials but restrict the two lawmakers' right of participation or representation in the Assembly and its bodies.
But the idea of banning the two MPs is not supported by the parliamentary assembl’s President Jean-Claude Mignon of France, who said the pair had been elected following what has been considered democratic elections.
“It is not the job of the Assembly to tell the Hungarians or the Greeks ‘You voted correctly’, or ‘You didn’t vote correctly,” he was quoted as saying.

by: Yossi Lempkowicz

EJP