Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-20-Speech-2-471"
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"en.20040420.20.2-471"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, unlike a number of other non-Italian colleagues on the committee, who it is no accident belong to the ever-moralising Left, I do not wish to interfere in the internal matters of a sovereign member of the Union and I have no desire to make idle accusations against its legitimate government.
As a Fleming, all I can do is note the hypocrisy with which the champions of selective indignation once again think they have to give the Italian Government lessons in democracy. The rapporteur has set them an example today however, and so I would strongly advise her to do some research into how the opposition in my country, Belgium, is being systematically boycotted by the public broadcaster. The rapporteur might find out how the First Minister of my country put pressure on an editor-in-chief to report favourably on the government. She might discover how the public broadcaster, in a kind of Pravda-style slavishness, merely operates to safeguard the cult of celebrity around that First Minister. She might note how the Minister for Foreign Affairs recently tried again to prevent the broadcasting of a documentary about the crimes of Belgium and the royal house in our former colony the Congo. She might note, finally, how my party, the Flemish Block, that represents 18% of the electorate, was summoned to appear in court by a generously subsidised government organisation purely for the offence of giving an opinion. They really are violations of the freedom of expression, yet I do not find them in this report. This is not a balanced report, therefore, that is sincerely concerned about any shortcomings within the Union in the field of freedom of expression. This report is an attempt at intimidation from the Left, that simply cannot stomach the fact that the Italian electorate turns out to have voted in a non-politically correct way."@en1
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