Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-02-Speech-1-023"
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"en.20090202.13.1-023"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Czech Presidency began one month ago, but it has already managed to spit in our faces and insult us with its gift: Estonia is covered with a hammer and sickle, there is a drunken man on the floor of a Finnish sauna, Germany has a swastika, Italy has football players holding balls near their genitals, Bulgaria is covered with toilets, etc. etc. This is how the artist who made the Czech Republic’s gift to the European Union portrayed the nations and countries of the European Union in his work.
Art can and often must shock, but is the mocking of another country and people the most fitting way to do so? The Czech Government speaks of the artist’s freedom of expression: true, but here that freedom has definitely been used in the wrong context. The government is apparently not permitted to interfere with the artist’s creative freedom: this is also true but, in giving this gift, the Czech Government has accepted the message that this gift conveys, and, as the gift-giver, it, and not the artist, must now bear responsibility for the consequences. It is difficult to understand how the leadership of the Czech Republic can consider itself entitled to insult other Member States.
As a representative elected from Estonia, I expect an answer and an apology from the country that holds the presidency, so that I may relay it to the Estonian people. Unfortunately, none of the representatives of the presidency are here, but I believe that my request will reach them."@en1
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