Prime Minister Janez Janša is facing criticism after tweeting that some MEPs are “Soros puppets”. The MEP’s under attack included Sophie in ‘t Veld, the chair of a fact-finding mission currently examining Slovenia’s compliance with the rule of law and media freedom covenants.
“We urgently call on Janša to cease the provocations against members of the European Parliament. Attacks on members of this house are also attacks on European citizens,” European Parliament President David Sassoli said on Twitter on Thursday.
“A constructive collaboration with the rotating Council Presidency can only be based on mutual trust and respect,” he said.
The statement came after Janša tweeted an image with the heading “13 of the 226 known Soros puppets in the EU parliament”, referring to Hungarian billionaire George Soros.
Janša, who has often accused political opponents of being on Soros’s payroll, has since deleted the tweet.
Twitter sleuths have traced the image he tweeted to a radical hate blog.
Some of the people in the image are no longer MEPs and one, Hans van Baalen, passed away in April.
Some accused Janša of anti-Semitism, including the Dutch MEP Malik Azmani, who described the image as a “despicable, anti-Semitic trope”. Vice-president of Renew Europe, and German Green MEP Daniel Freund said Janša “peddles Orban-style anti-Semitic conspiracy theories”.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte described it as “tasteless” adding that “the government just conveyed this same sentiment to the Slovenian ambassador in The Hague.”
Liberal EU lawmaker
Guy Verhofstadt called on Janša not to spread anti-semitic, anti-democratic, and anti-EU conspiracy theories that are “boosted by people whose strings are pulled by Putin”.
“This has no place in any democracy and certainly not in the EU!” Verhofstadt tweeted.
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