A Bulgarian Member of the European Parliament has been accused of giving a Nazi salute in the organization’s Strasbourg meeting place on Wednesday.
Angel Dzhambazki, from Bulgaria’s nationalist IMRO party, denies giving the salute – which is banned in Germany – in response to the European Union Court of Justice (ECJ) declaring it is legal for the E.U. to withhold funding from Hungary and Poland as they have not adhered to E.U. policies.
Dzhambazki is adamant the gesture was “an innocent wave” to the chair of the meeting. He believes “this unfortunate event is a simple case of gross misunderstanding” and apologised for the confusion, Euronews reports.
After the display, the Bulgarian MEP railed against the European Union’s courts on Twitter calling them an “abomination”, adding there is “no functioning rule of law” and accused the organization of using the ECJ as a “whip against the nation-states you despise.”
A Twitter account representing the MEP’s of the pro-European federalism group Renew accused Dzhambazki of allegedly giving the “scandalous” salute in an effort to “insult” Sandro Gozi, one of their MEPs, with the implication that the E.U. are behaving like Nazis.
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Vice-President of the European Parliament Italian MEP Pina Picierno who was presiding over the session “condemned” Dzambazki and called for “this ignoble and unacceptable gesture to be sanctioned”.
Picierno also suggested the “European Parliament is a living monument of democracy against the barbarism of Nazi-fascism”.
The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, later weighed in and branded the “fascist salute” as “offensive” to all in Europe.
“It offends me and everyone else in Europe,” she added. “We stand for the opposite. We are the House of democracy. That gesture is from the darkest chapter of our history and must be left there.”