Now it's blasphemy to mock Europe

Spectator, The, Nov 18, 2000 by Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose

The EU is going to extraordinary lengths to protect itself against criticism, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, and at Nice next month will seek new ways of eroding our freedoms

Brussels

THIS article is blasphemous. It contains irreverential criticism of the European Union. It brings the European Court of Justice into disrepute, or tries to. It subjects Senor Damaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer, the Court's Spanish advocate-general, to particular ridicule, and does so mischievously in the knowledge that he has a very thin skin. On the Richter scale of disrespect it is a seven or an eight, and undoubtedly falls under the European Court's emerging blasphemy doctrine. This deems that political criticism of the European Union and its leading figures can be akin to the most extreme forms of religious blasphemy. It can therefore be suppressed - and punished without violating protected freedom of speech.

Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer ventured into blasphemy law in an opinion delivered on 19 October in a landmark free-speech case - number C-274/99 P. It involves a British economist, Bernard Connolly, who argues that he was unlawfully sacked from the European Commission for writing The Rotten Heart of Europe.

Last year Connolly lost his case in the EU's lower court, the Court of First Instance, which ruled that the EU has an undefined - and seemingly unlimited - power to restrict political criticism in `the general interests of the Communities'. He appealed against this astounding ruling, challenging the big boys in the full Court of Justice to ensure that sanity prevailed. Instead, he now finds himself up against Mr Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer, who has upped the ante, chattering about blasphemy. As if it could not get any worse, the lead judge handling the case is Melchior Wathelet, the disgraced Belgian justice minister driven from office for bungling the Dutroux paedophile scandal. Sanity is very far from prevailing.

The advocate-general's opinion cited the blasphemy case of Wingrove v. United Kingdom, invoking it to demonstrate a precedent in English and European law that there are some forms of expression so offensive to the `rights of others' that they can legitimately be restricted. By extension, therefore, the EU can take action to protect itself against Mr Connolly's turbulent book, which has caused huge annoyance to Europe's ruling class since it was published in 1995.

The blasphemous shockers in this critique of economic and monetary integration are all carefully prepared by European Commission officials in a chargesheet against the author. The indictment found that the book was injurious to the good name of the Commission because it 1) criticised the `blind arrogance of Frenchmen such as Jacques Delors and his Commission acolytes'; 2) used the term `Satanic-featured' to describe the goatee beard and beetling eyebrows of the Portuguese Commissioner, Joao de Deus Pinheiro; 3) accused the European Commission's man in London, Geoffrey Martin, of `ceaseless denigration' of his own country; 4) compared `British Euro-enthusiasts' to fellow-travellers who apologised for Stalin in the 1930s; 5) and, most heinously, referred to the 'opportunism' of the Italian government. Yes, the book also said the euro was a hare-brained idea and would probably fail, but that was not the charge made against Connolly. The Commission has never been eager to engage with the substance of the book.

Set against this is a porn video called Visions of Ecstasy, the blasphemous work at the centre of the Wingrove case. The British government refused this video a distribution licence, and for good reasons. It depicts the 16th-century Carmelite nun St Teresa of Avila engaging in an erotic lesbian fantasy with her 'Psyche', played by a young actress, and a necrophiliac fantasy with the crucified Christ, which involves her licking the blood from the open gash in his side. The 18minute 'Vision', accompanied by heavy rock music, ends with a scene of St Teresa astride the body of Christ, who is laid on the ground, still nailed to the cross. As she reaches what appears to be an orgasm, Christ starts to respond, intertwining his fingers in hers. I don't know whether Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer has examined the video. He is not from Avila, I am told.

When I first mentioned in the Daily Telegraph two weeks ago that the advocate-general had likened dissent to blasphemy, the Court reacted explosively. The Court staff told a large number of callers - including the House of Commons Library and the BBC - that my assertion was utter rubbish; another example of mad Eurosceptic fever in the British press. But they did not post Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer's opinion on the Court website, according to normal procedure, so that people could judge for themselves. In fact, they denied that the case even existed, referring callers to a different case - number C-273/99 P, a technical staff case also involving Bernard Connolly which had nothing to do with freedom of speech and obviously did not contain any reference to blasphemy. This killed off interest in the news story, for a while.