The spokesman for Joseph Daul, head of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament who made a controversial statement about pornography this week, told Breitbart News that Daul only used the porn analogy to make a point about the importance of open borders and common currency and not as a selling point for a united Europe.
It was widely reported Wednesday that Mr. Daul, Member of the European Parliament from France and recently elected overall President of the European People’s Party, said easy access to porn was one of the benefits of the European Union.
This is the full quote from Daul’s interview with a local French newspaper:
When I have groups of young visitors [at the European Parliament] in front of me telling me that Europe has no purpose, I talk to them about the environment, about food security… and then I tell them that at their age, 18 years old, when I wanted to go to Kehl to watch porn films that were prohibited in France, you sometimes had to wait for two hours and a half to pass through the customs! You’d arrive at the cinema and the film would be finished! And every other time I had forgotten my wallet with german marks! When you explain things this way, to the young, they immediately understand what purposes Europe serves!
In an exclusive interview, Daul’s spokesman, Deliah Glasse, told Breitbart News, “It was a joke and should be seen in the context of the times” – that is, when Daul was young, the ’60s.
She said, “The chairman was making a joke trying to illustrate that sometimes exaggerations are needed in order to make the young people take notice how Europe has evolved and developed in the last 50 years.” He wanted youngsters to visualize a blocked border “because now we are passing without passports or border patrols, and this is an added value of the European Union;” this, not easy access to porn.
Social conservative leaders in Europe immediately sprang to Daul’s defense. Most expressed skepticism that he was actually defending porn.
Luca Volante, former head of the EPP Group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, told Breitbart News that he “could not believe what was reported by this newspaper. Joseph Daul is a good Christian and Catholic… he cannot have affirmed those things about ‘porno.'”
Maria Hildingsson, Secretary General of the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe, told Breitbart News, “The example chosen is certainly not very positive, but I suspect the idea is rather to talk about a common currency, freedom of movement, rather than pornography.”
Hildingsson said, “It would be useful to investigate what political positions the journalist who wrote this has. Elections are only six weeks away, and there are surely people who wish to weaken the biggest group in the European Parliament that happens to be conservative.”