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		East Midlands MEPs slam Strasbourg farce Wednesday, 27 October 2004 Conservative East Midlands MEPs Roger Helmer and Chris Heaton-Harris have today slammed recent developments at the Strasbourg session of the European Parliament. They were speaking out as the incoming EC president, Jose Manuel Barroso, pulled out of a vote aimed at either ratifying him and his new team or throwing them all out. Mr Heaton Harris said: "I was quite prepared to vote against the Commission, although not for the reasons surrounding Mr Buttiglione. After all, the new Commission, including the British designate Peter Mandelson, want to end the UK rebate. We are now in unchartered waters. The new Commission is supposed to be in place by November 1st. This surely will not now happen. This breach of the rules calls into question the entire legitimacy of this process". The proposed new commission has been rocked in recent weeks by the proposed Italian commissioner, Rocco Buttiglione. Mr Buttiglione, a devout Roman Catholic, holds personal views about homosexuals and single mothers. Mr Helmer commented: "The issue here is not the views of an Italian Catholic, but the very culture of this European Commission. It is totally committed to building a country called Europe, with more integration and centralisation, plus the EU constitution. Worse still, 19 out of 25 commissioners have publicly said that they will start to implement the new EU constitution even before the public have had a chance to ratify it. This is the threat we will be fighting".