Publication of the official EU diary for young people: violation of the principle of freedom of thought, opinion and religion
31.1.2011
Question for written answer E-000994/2011
to the Commission
Rule 117
Roberta Angelilli (PPE) , Gianni Pittella (S&D) , Mario Mauro (PPE) , Carlo Casini (PPE) , David-Maria Sassoli (S&D) , Francesco Enrico Speroni (EFD) , Lara Comi (PPE) , Licia Ronzulli (PPE) , Barbara Matera (PPE) , Giovanni Collino (PPE) , Paolo Bartolozzi (PPE) , Crescenzio Rivellini (PPE) , Antonio Cancian (PPE) , Carlo Fidanza (PPE) , Alfredo Pallone (PPE) , Vito Bonsignore (PPE) , Salvatore Tatarella (PPE) , Potito Salatto (PPE) , Sergio Berlato (PPE) , Marco Scurria (PPE) , Tiziano Motti (PPE) , Antonello Antinoro (PPE) , Aldo Patriciello (PPE) , Magdi Cristiano Allam (PPE) , Iva Zanicchi (PPE) , Raffaele Baldassarre (PPE) , Alfredo Antoniozzi (PPE) , Clemente Mastella (PPE) , Gabriele Albertini (PPE) , Giovanni La Via (PPE) , Cristiana Muscardini (PPE) , Salvatore Iacolino (PPE) , Luigi Ciriaco De Mita (PPE) , Herbert Dorfmann (PPE) , Erminia Mazzoni (PPE) , Sergio Paolo Frances Silvestris (PPE) , Amalia Sartori (PPE) , Francesco De Angelis (S&D) , Guido Milana (S&D) , Gianluca Susta (S&D) , Silvia Costa (S&D) , Debora Serracchiani (S&D) , Mario Pirillo (S&D) , Patrizia Toia (S&D) , Lorenzo Fontana (EFD) , Mara Bizzotto (EFD) , Fiorello Provera (EFD) , Giancarlo Scottà (EFD) , Mario Borghezio (EFD) , Vincenzo Iovine (ALDE) , Giommaria Uggias (ALDE) , Filip Kaczmarek (PPE) , Jarosław Leszek Wałęsa (PPE) , Konstantinos Poupakis (PPE) , Marie-Thérèse Sanchez-Schmid (PPE) , Manfred Weber (PPE) , Georgios Papanikolaou (PPE) , Anne Delvaux (PPE) , Rareş-Lucian Niculescu (PPE) , Alejo Vidal-Quadras (PPE) , Sari Essayah (PPE) , Veronica Lope Fontagné (PPE) , Marietta Giannakou (PPE) , Joanna Katarzyna Skrzydlewska (PPE) , Miroslav Mikolášik (PPE) , Zuzana Roithová (PPE) , Lena Kolarska-Bobińska (PPE) , Frank Engel (PPE) , Santiago Fisas Ayxela (PPE) , Jim Higgins (PPE) , Constance Le Grip (PPE) , Elisabeth Morin-Chartier (PPE) , Bernd Posselt (PPE) , Esther Herranz García (PPE) , Jean-Pierre Audy (PPE) , Gabriel Mato Adrover (PPE) , Agustín Díaz de Mera García Consuegra (PPE) , Roger Helmer (ECR) , Richard Ashworth (ECR) , Alan Kelly (S&D) , Nick Griffin (NI) , Slavi Binev (NI) , Philip Claeys (NI) , Dimitar Stoyanov (NI) , Diane Dodds (NI) , Frédérique Ries (ALDE) , Robert Rochefort (ALDE) , Nathalie Griesbeck (ALDE) , Jiří Maštálka (GUE/NGL) , Sabine Verheyen (PPE) , Philippe Juvin (PPE) , Piotr Borys (PPE) , Milan Zver (PPE) and Anna Záborská (PPE)
The Commission recently produced over 3 million copies of the European Diary, with 51 pages of information on the European Union. That diary has already been distributed to over 21 000 schools, free of charge to students, by the Commission. Around EUR 5 million were spent on the diaries.
The dates of the main religious festivals are shown in the diary, including Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish and Chinese holy days and other, secular, public holidays, such as Europe Day and other important European holidays, but no Christian feast days — not even Christmas Day — are mentioned, despite the fact that the most Europeans are Christians. Precisely because there have been continual acts of persecution, ghettoisation and attacks on Christians throughout the world, the responsibility lies with the European Union to focus greater attention on respect for the freedom of religion of its citizens and recognition of their feast days, with this being the basic principle of any democratic system.
Furthermore, on 12 January 2011, the Commission press service announced that it had no intention to recall the copies of the diary that had already been distributed.
Can the Commission therefore state:
- 1.Why it does not intend to recall the copies of the diary already distributed?
- 2.Whether it does not consider the contents of that diary to conflict with Article 10 (freedom of religion) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and Articles 21 and 22 of that Charter, which concern the principle of non‑discrimination on the grounds of religion and respect by the Union for the religious and cultural diversity of European citizens?
- 3.What objective criteria were taken into consideration when drawing up the diary?
- 4.Whether it will check the contents of such diaries in future, and assume responsibility for ensuring that these reflect the values and fundamental rights of the European Union?
OJ C 286 E, 30/09/2011