Rebel EU MEPs fined over Strasbourg treaty protest

Parliament's president Hans-Gert Pöttering has docked the daily allowances of Four UK MEPs involved in disrupting parliament last December.

Dozens of deputies, many of them from the British Conservative party and UK Independence Party, disrupted the signing of the charter of fundamental rights in Strasbourg by loudly demanding a referendum on the EU treaty.

Four British eurosceptic MEPs will have their daily allowance of €287 docked.

Roger Helmer, Roger Knapman and Jim Allister will all lose three days' allowance while Godfrey Bloom will be docked two day's allowance.

The parliament president described the scenes at the time as an “unfortunate sideshow”.

“The people who shouted didn’t exercise any arguments, they just shouted out. That’s no way to express an argument,” he said.

UK Socialist MEP Gary Titley was also furious with the disruption, saying that certain British Conservative and UK Independence Party members had “harmed the image of Britain abroad by shouting football chants, just when we have rid our country of its hooligan image”.

However, UKIP leader Nigel Farage described the protest as “the new EU in action, showing the world a united face as they steamroll towards their own superstate while totally refusing to allow anyone to see a different point of view”.

Following the decision, Titley said on Thursday, "I hope we have seen the back of those bully boy tactics."

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