MEPs... Say what?! Tweets of the week

Published on March 14, 2014

PoliticsMEPs... Say What!?

Trans­la­tion: "Eu­ropean Par­lia­ment con­demns the de­ci­sions un­der­taken by the troika. For MEPs,  aus­ter­ity poli­cies have been a fail­ure".

David Sas­soli, jour­nal­ist and one time an­chor of Tg1 news (most pop­u­lar Ital­ian news pro­gramme) is an MEP for the Ital­ian De­mo­caratic Party. He tweeted the re­sults of a vote against the aus­ter­ity mea­sures of the Troika (Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, In­ter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund and Eu­ro­pean Cen­tral Bank) dur­ing the cri­sis in Greece, Cyprus, Ire­land and Por­tu­gal. The vote has no leg­isla­tive ef­fects, but it's a pow­er­ful po­lit­i­cal sym­bol. Is this a sign of ten­sions and con­flict be­tween dif­fer­ent Eu­ro­pean in­sti­tu­tions?

Trans­la­tion: I'm ask­ing my­self if there is still any sense of mea­sure and pro­por­tion­al­ity. #Pol­i­tic­sTues­day

Trans­la­tion: I'm telling my­self that you won't rec­on­cile the French with pol­i­tics in this man­ner. #Pol­i­tic­sTues­day

Robert Rochefort seems to have mo­men­tar­ily lost his mind on Tues­day. A reck­less splurge of 20 tweets in four min­utes briefly and bor­ingly blocked up the Eu­ro­pean Elec­tions Twit­ter feed. His self-in­dul­gent so­cial media splurge call­s for ‘a mea­sure of pro­por­tion­al­ity’ and claims ‘you won’t rec­on­cile the French to pol­i­tics like this’. The irony seems lost on Rochefort. Twit­ter should be used to en­gage vot­ers, not ir­ri­tate them.

Sean Kelly re­minds us that the Ero­pean Par­lia­ment does take im­por­tant de­ci­sions which im­prove our every­day lives! Soon we won’t have to ask around for a phone charger which fits our mo­bile. We won't have to pay for­tunes for ob­scure, strangely shaped re­place­ments. Eu­rope will be­come a har­mo­nious, charger-shar­ing utopia!

Trans­la­tion:  Nano par­ti­cles in your food with­out your knowl­edge. Does that tempt you? De­ci­sion to be taken to­mor­row in Stras­bourg. My choice is NO.

José Bovè was once im­pris­oned for three months for dis­man­tling a Mc­Don­alds. He once trav­elled to the USA with 30kg of Rochefort cheese in his lug­gage to protest against US tar­iffs on Eu­ro­pean goods. To­gether with Ska Keller, José Bovè was re­cently cho­sen to lead the Green Coali­tion for the EU elec­tions in May. As you can see from this tweet, he hates the glob­alised in­dus­trial food in­dus­try.

Trans­la­tion: Girls, today I rec­om­mend for you- mus­sels. Enjoy!".

On In­ter­na­tional Women's Day, some peo­ple were out cam­paign­ing for sex­ual equal­ity. This Pol­ish politi­cian was at home mak­ing crude misog­y­nist quips on Twit­ter. A mus­sel is Pol­ish slang for a vagina. He at­tached a link to a recipe for mus­sels and the hash­tag #im­plied­mean­ings to make sure no­body missed the joke.

"Lack of ac­count­abil­ity" is one of the weapons favoured by Eu­roscep­tics in their at­tacks on the EU. Like many Eu­roscep­tic ar­gu­ments, this one is based on myths and mis­in­for­ma­tion. Every EU Treaty, most re­cently the 2009 Lis­bon Treaty, has given more power to the di­rectly elected Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment. Her­man van Rompuy is Pres­i­dent of the Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil. The Pres­i­dent is elected by na­tional heads of state, and has no leg­isla­tive power any­way. Krem­lin…. re­ally ?

Trans­la­tion: Hol­lande- a man with his ear to the ground! Stasi 2.0 #Sarkozy­Tap­ping

With ap­proval rat­ings below 20%, Fran­cois Hol­lande is the most un­pop­u­lar French Pres­i­dent ever. He stum­bles from scan­dal to scan­dal, the lat­est one being the Nico­las Sarkozy spy­ing af­fair. Pros­e­cu­tors tapped Sarkozy's phone as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion into his fi­nan­cial links with the late Libyan dic­ta­tor Moam­mar Gaddafi. This scan­dal is par­tic­u­larly per­ti­nent in the con­text of Hol­lande's strong crit­i­cism of NSA ac­tiv­i­ties.