EUROPE:Conservatives in the European Parliament will expel a British politician from their group for appearing to compare the handling of a session under a German president to democratic abuses by Adolf Hitler's Nazis.
Daniel Hannan made the reference to the 1933 Enabling Act that paved the way for Nazi dictatorship after being prevented from making a protest in plenary about the EU treaty due to replace the bloc's defunct constitution.
"His remarks this morning are incompatible with the EPP-ED group's values. It is for this reason that I will ask the group to proceed with the expulsion of Mr Hannan," Joseph Daul, the French head of European People's Party and European Democrats, said in a statement.
Mr Hannan denied the accusations of some deputies that he had directly likened Hans-Gert Poettering, the German who presides over the European assembly, to Hitler. He said he had merely wanted to make a procedural point.
"Whatever MEPs [members of European Parliament] are, they are not fascists - and that is particularly true of Hans-Gert," he said by telephone. "My point is simply that a majority is not the same as constitutional government."
He said the 1933 Enabling Act had a technical majority in the Reichstag and that MEPs had used a majority to block his protest through procedural means.
In what Mr Hannan described on his internet blog as a "little wheeze", he and allies have demanded after every parliament vote the right to protest about the fact that the vast majority of EU countries want to ratify the Lisbon Treaty without referendums.
"At worst, our protest would occasionally keep MEPs from their lunch for another 20 minutes," he said on his blog.
Signed by EU leaders last month, the Lisbon Treaty retains large parts of the EU constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in referendums, including a more permanent EU president and a powerful chief of EU foreign policy.
Mr Hannan, who in the past has sought to split from the EPP-ED and establish a more Eurosceptic grouping, was undismayed by his imminent expulsion.
"It should [expel me]. There is complete incompatibility," he said.