After European citizens began to complain en masse over a report proposing that porn should be banned in the 27-member state bloc, European politicians blew the whistle on their own IT department.
One member of the European Parliament (MEP) claims the upper house's own IT department is censoring e-mails from citizens.
The European Parliament in Strasbourg, France
(Credit: European Parliament/Flickr)
Pirate Party member Christian Engström MEP blew the whistle on his fellow political colleagues after they had complained to the parliament's IT department that they were receiving vast numbers of e-mails from the very people they represent.
It comes only a day after CNET reported that other European politicians are set to vote next week on a report that could lead to a pan-European EU ban on all forms of pornography in the region.
On his Web site, Engström said that it was "absolutely excellent" that citizens were actively engaging in the democratic process, and that he had received some 350 emails to his office before 12 midday today.
After this, he said, "these mails suddenly stopped arriving," he said. He claimed, quite frankly, that: "The IT department of the European Parliament is blocking the delivery of the e-mails on this issue, after some members of the parliament complained about getting e-mails from citizens."
He described the block as an "absolute disgrace" and that the European upper house views input from its citizens "as spam." He noted that he will be writing a letter to the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, about this "totally undemocratic practice."
The massive influx of e-mails stemmed from a report written by Dutch MEP for the Socialist Party, Kartika Tamara Liotard, who called on the European Union to enforce a blanket ban on pornography in the media of the 27 member states, including online.
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