EU: The European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, has denounced as "demagoguery" a European Parliament motion of censure against him over a holiday he spent last year aboard the yacht of a billionaire friend.
Mr Barroso told the parliament that the motion, proposed by the United Kingdom Independence Party MEP Nigel Farage was a populist ploy aimed at undermining the European project.
"This has crossed the line between democracy and demagoguery and that is something we cannot accept," he said.
The motion called on Mr Barroso to explain why he accepted the holiday from Spiros Latsis, a Greek shipping magnate and banker, a month before the Prodi commission approved a €10 million state aid to one of Mr Latsis's companies. Mr Barroso said that Mr Latsis was a friend from his student days in Geneva 20 years ago and insisted there was no conflict of interest.
"This sort of attack is part of a populist trend, a trend seeking to manipulate by simplifying complicated subjects and seeking to undermine the Europe we are trying to build," he said.
The leaders of most of the parliament's political groups condemned the motion as a distraction from important issues facing Europe. Seventy-seven MEPs signed the motion, most of them from anti-EU groups. Sinn Féin's Bairbre De Brún and Mary Lou McDonald broke ranks with most of their colleagues in the United European Left group to support the motion. The Democratic Unionist Party's Jim Allister and the Independent MEP Kathy Sinnott also backed the motion.
MEPs will vote on the motion in Strasbourg next month, when it is likely to be defeated overwhelmingly.