Letter to the EU parliament president on blocking of emails from citizens #mepblock

I have now sent the following letter to the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz:

Dear President Schulz,

On March 7, 2013, a large number of citizens tried to email Members of the European Parliament to express their views on the ”Report on eliminating gender stereotypes” in the EU, which had attracted public attention on the internet and in media.

Around noon, approximately 350 emails from concerned citizens had arrived, but then they suddenly stopped appearing.

This turned out to be because the parliament’s IT support department LSU MEP had taken the decision to block these emails by classifying them as spam, after some MEPs had requested this.

I find it completely unacceptable that the parliament’s IT support department deliberately blocks certain emails from genuine citizens wishing to contact their elected representatives, and I find it even more unacceptable that this was done at the request of some individual MEPs (whose names and political groups I do not know).

No MEP should have the power of shutting off communication between other MEPs and their constituents using the parliament’s technical staff and infrastructure.

I look forward to your confirmation that you share this view, and that you will take immediate and appropriate action to both solve the present situation and make sure it is not repeated in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Christian Engström, MEP

PS. This email has also been sent by fax, to make sure it is not stopped by the filtering.