RACISM ROW IN UKIP GROUP: The European Parliament is investigating claims by a British U.K. Independence Party staffer of racist harassment from a colleague within the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group. Since filing the complaint in November, UKIP culture counselor Sarinder Joshua Duroch said his own party is refusing to make an issue of the complaint for fear of creating a split in the EFDD, which would lose political group status and European Parliament funding if one party were to leave it.
Duroch claimed that an assistant to Swedish Democrat MEP Kristina Winberg — Joel Ankar — called him an “Untermensch,” a term used by the Nazis to describe “inferior people.” “My own party won’t speak to me at all, MEPs themselves have put pressure on me to withdraw the complaint,” Duroch told Playbook. “They said it would cause tension in the group.”
The alleged argument happened on the night of November 17 at a Place du Luxembourg bar. Duroch filed a complaint, seen by Playbook, the following day, and is currently on medical leave from his post.
EFDD officials passed the complaint to the Parliament’s human-resources department but said the incident did not happen. “Joel Ankar was in mixed race company with his friends from the Congo, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia,” the EFDD said in a statement. “Hardly the company of a racist. Mr. Ankar and all the witnesses present totally refute the allegation that he used racist language to Joshua Duroch.””
Swedish Democrat spokesperson Peter Lundgren also defended Ankar, saying of the allegation: “There’s nothing to it.”
SPAM-A-GEDDON: We’ve told you about a litany of lost earrings and pens that somehow merited email pleas to EU staff on a mass scale. This week it’s news of a lost silver bracelet clogging Parliament inboxes. Playbook can reveal that the ongoing saga of assistants emailing 10,000 Parliament staff at a time may stem from a culture of spam. In our efforts to track down this week’s spammer — assistant Ramona Plaza — we discovered that the S&D group has an email account which is labeled as “S&D Spamming Account, S_D.” via the address “s.d-info@europarl.europa.eu” (see picture), and which Plaza used to reach every one of her colleagues. An S&D spokesperson tells us the spam account was used “by mistake” to search for the bracelet. No word on why the account needs to exist in the first place.
Parliamentary Spam Etiquette:
Do: Visit the Parliament’s Lost & Found department if you’ve lost something of value (this doesn’t include purple pens).
Don’t: Fire off an e-mail to the entire European Parliament the second you realize your trinket is missing.
Do: Assess the value of the item you fear is lost. Is it worth more than your lost reputation?
Don’t: Try to disguise your assault on everyone’s inboxes by using your party’s spamming account; this serves only to make your party look bad.
LAKE ARTS-LOI: Blocked drains outside the Arts-Loi metro station created puddles big enough to swim in this week — making it risky to walk on adjoining sidewalks while wearing nice clothes…
BY THE NUMBERS BREXIT EDITION: 0 — The number of times the words “European Parliament” are mentioned in Council President Donald Tusk’s draft to EU leaders on the U.K.’s demands for reform. Even in the chapter on “Changes to EU secondary legislation” in the area of free movement of people, the Parliament doesn’t get a name-check. That’s despite the fact that each of the regulations the U.K. wants to see amended are officially titled, “Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council.”
AMAZON PRIME ARRIVES… BUT FAILS TO DELIVER: Amazon launched its premium delivery service “Prime” in Belgium this week, because “The most frequent question our Belgian customers ask is when we are going to bring the Prime service to Belgium.” Good luck figuring out how to register for the service. There is no Belgian Amazon site, and in a country with five commonly spoken languages, that can lead users in any number of directions. The U.K., German and Dutch sites provide no info. Two inquiries to the Amazon help desk couldn’t yield any information either. Amazon’s “Europe Core” PR team was more helpful — explaining that you need to register via the French website. When Ryan did, the product he wanted wasn’t available for Prime delivery, nor could it be delivered to one of Amazon’s “delivery points,” supposedly another service offered to Prime customers, because he didn’t order enough.
ANOTHER BELGIAN SOLUTION FOR EU TO AIRPORT RAIL LINK: The new tunnel for the train connecting Schuman to the Brussels airport was due to open in December. The original plan was for it to open in 2013 — after having been under construction since 2008. But the terror lockdown in November and related deployments made emergency services unavailable to conduct a final emergency drill in the tunnel. Apparently they’ve been unavailable for three months. The drill will finally take place on February 25 and 26. And then it will take another five weeks to get trains running. That’s if all goes well with the drill.
WHO’S UP
Matteo Renzi: Europe’s own Donald Trump knows how to stay in the limelight. The Italian PM now claims Jean-Claude Juncker should have been elected by way of a primary.
David Cameron: There’s general consensus that a deal on his EU reforms will be agreed to at the February summit, and he hasn’t taken too many major blows in the process.
WHO’S DOWN
Angela Merkel: Europe’s mother couldn’t score a deal with Turkey on halting refugees from traveling to Germany, while her approval ratings continue to plunge.
Austerity: While EU official preach austerity for southern Europe, they’re also flying high to Strasbourg every month in a private jet, it was revealed by the Telegraph this week.