Britain’s Daily Express highlights a story that will raise red flags for those worried about the threat of Islamist terror.
The anti-EU party’s defence spokesman Mike Hookem submitted a written question to top Brussels chief Jean-Claude Juncker’s European Commission over the ongoing crisis in the northern French town.
British truck drivers have recently warned of escalating violence as refugees camped out in Calais and at other French ports turn to increasingly desperate measures in their bid to stowaway on lorries and enter the UK.
Mr Hookem had asked the Commission whether they would consider changing the terms of the continent’s borderless Schengen Area – of which Britain is not part – or EU laws on asylum seekers in a bid to calm the situation in Calais.
But, in emails seen by Express.co.uk, Brussels bureaucrats dismissed the UKIP MEP’s question, in part, on the grounds it could be “considered as offensive for a specific group”.
Mr Hookem, MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, blasted the Commission for “trying to shut down debate” over EU legislation amid the ongoing Europe-wide refugee crisis.
He said: “I submitted that question after meeting constituents, who told me of the levels of violence which have been escalating, including a driver’s brush with death after a missile was hurled through his windscreen.
“As an elected Member of the European Parliament I think I should have the ability to ask a question about an ongoing crisis brought about by EU laws without the PC brigade trying to shut down debate.”
He added: “It is not for unelected eurocrats to decide what is and isn’t allowed to be debated when it comes to the truth.
“Censorship is truly offensive but shutting down debate is what the EU is rather good at and they wouldn’t let something inconvenient like the future of an entire industry or people’s lives allow them to face up to what their disastrous policies have done.”
One can think of at least one columnist who might tie this story to the notion of a “specter … haunting Europe.”
