EU elite are filthy pigs, says Bossi
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Strasbourg
(Filed: 23/10/2003)
news.telegraph.co.uk
The European Union's elite are determined to destroy Europe's Christian heritage, Italy's reform minister, Umberto Bossi said yesterday.
He described the elite as "filthy pigs" who wanted to "make paedophilia as easy as possible".
Mr Bossi, leader of the Northern League, said Brussels was "transforming vices into virtues" and "advancing the cause of atheism every day". He denounced the European arrest warrant as a step towards "dictatorship, deportation, and terror, instilling fear in the people, a crime in itself". It would lead to a Stalinist regime "multiplied by 25".
One day Italian citizens would be locked up on the orders of Turkish judges, he told Il Giornale newspaper, which is owned by the family of the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. He added that the euro was a "total flop", its inflationary effects costing ordinary people "a fortune" in lost purchasing power.
The outburst was a public relations disaster for Mr Berlusconi, who was at the European Parliament in Strasbourg yesterday for the first time since his calamitous debut as EU president in July.
Then he joked that a German Euro-MP would "be perfect" for the role of Nazi camp commandant in a forthcoming film, adding that Italians, unlike Germans, are not "hung up" about the Holocaust.
He returned to the subject in The Spectator last month, defending Mussolini as a "benign" dictator who 'did not murder anyone' but sent dissidents to "holiday camps". He later apologised to Italy's Jews.
Yesterday Mr Berlusconi managed to control his temper when the same MEP, Martin Schulz, led a fresh attack. Mr Schulz demanded that the prime minister rein in his coalition ally and accused him of sabotaging the EU warrant to save his own skin.
Mr Berlusconi is under investigation by a Spanish judge for alleged fraud. He has used delaying tactics to prevent the EU warrant coming into force in Italy in January. At the same time, the existing extradition treaties between EU states will lapse, giving him almost total immunity as long as he remains in office. |
