STRASBOURG (France), Feb 15: The European Union backed Denmark on Wednesday in the row over anti-Islam cartoons, but leaders of its legislature differed over the limits of free speech.

Political leaders from all groups rallied behind Copenhagen in a special debate in the European Parliament, declaring that an attack on Denmark was an attack on all member states and condemning the resort to violence by some protesters.

However, libertarians warned against any attempt to make the media adopt self-censorship.

“I want here today to send my solidarity to the people of Denmark,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said, calling Danes ‘a people who rightly enjoy the reputation as being amongst the most open and tolerant not just in Europe but in the world’.

Danish goods have been subject to boycotts in some Muslim countries and Mr Barroso was applauded when he said such action was by definition a boycott of European goods.

Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit condemned companies such as French hypermarket chain Carrefour and Swiss food giant Nestle for issuing notices in Muslim countries saying they were not Danish or did not stock Danish goods.

He and liberal spokeswoman Karen Riis-Joergensen urged the European Commission to drop the idea of encouraging the media to adopt a voluntary code of conduct that would avoid offending religious sensibilities.

“If we start undermining freedom of expression, our right to analyse any religion critically, our fundamental right to speak freely and express ourselves will be violated,” Riis-Joergensen said.

SELF-RESTRICTION: However, Austrian President Heinz Fischer, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, appeared in an address to the EU legislature to call for media self-restriction.

“If a ban on pictorial representation constitutes an essential element of a religion, one ought not and must not offend against this principle twice — not only by disrespecting this ban, but also by reinforcing this hurtful violation of a taboo in the form of a caricature,” he said.

The leader of the centre-right European People’s Party, Hans-Gert Poettering, called for a commission of experts chosen by the EU and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to review schoolbooks for ethnic and religious prejudice.

Brandishing magazines published in Muslim countries, he said: “We have documents of hundreds of cartoons and caricatures which make a mockery of our values and our religion. So these cartoons exist in the Islamic world too.”

The socialist and liberal groups each symbolically chose a Danish EU member as its speaker in the debate. A former prime minister of Denmark, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, said how shocked he had been to see people attacked, flags burned and embassies damaged.—Reuters