The assassination of American conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk unleashed a bitter debate among European lawmakers on Thursday over whether to honour him with a moment of silence.
Kirk was shot and killed by an unknown assailant while onstage at an outdoor event in western state of Utah on Wednesday. A few hours later, Charlie Weimers from hard-right ECR group in the Parliament sent a plea to his colleagues to observe a minute of silence during Thursday’s plenary session in Strasbourg in Kirk’s memory.
“Political violence is not only increasing, it is becoming systemic,” Weimers wrote, citing incidents of intimidation against right-wing politicians, including Danish lawmaker Inger Støjberg and Sweden’s Carl-Oskar Bohlin.
Weimers mail received praise and support from fellow right-wing politicians. Austria’s Roman Haider wrote that the minute of silence would be “a dignified gesture to express our solidarity, to honour his memory”. German AFD member René Aust went even further, suggesting Kirk be nominated for Parliament’s Sakharov Prize – a prestigous award previously given to Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai.
Liberal French lawmaker Nathalie Loiseau disagrees.
“Political violence is despicable, wherever it comes from and whoever is the target,” she wrote in a lone dissent in the mail chain amongst MEPs. “Whether he deserves to be honoured by our Parliament is another story.”
Loiseau included a screenshot of an old social media post Kirk had addressed to Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky.
“You are an ungrateful petulant child who is responsible for 1 million dead,” Kirk wrote in the quoted tweet, that Loiseau also posted on her own socials.
Crunch time
The decision on whether to hold a minute of silence typically falls under the discretion of the President of the Parliament. Parliament insiders told Euractiv that Weimers had been granted a point of order – but a minute of silence hadn’t been agreed.
When Parliament resumed its session at noon on Thursday, Weimers took the floor with remarks praising Kirk before concluding: “I yield the rest of my time for a moment of silence.” Lawmakers from the Parliament’s right-wing groups then stood up.
But Katarina Barley, the Parliament Vice-President preceding over the debate, intervened.
“We have discussed this, and you know that the president has said ‘No’ to a minute of silence,” she said to applause from the left-wing MEPs.
As Barley introduced the next point of order, right-wingers were loudly banging their tables in anger.
The European Parliament rules of procedure don’t allow MEPs to ‘yield’ their time – as it is known from the US Congress.
“It is a disgrace to Europe that we do not honour a man who stood for dialogue,” Henrik Dahl from EPP told to Euractiv in a written statement. “I stood up to honour Charlie Kirk.”
The office of Parliament President Roberta Metsola, a member of centre-right EPP, told Euractiv that “minutes of silence are announced by the President at the opening of the plenary.” The plenary began Monday.
Metsola also addressed the killing late last night. “Shocked at the absolutely horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah today,” she wrote.
European leaders were quick to react to the assassination, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni calling it “a heinous murder” and “a deep wound for democracy”. Also Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán addressed the killing on X. “Yesterday, we lost a true defender of faith and freedom,” he wrote.
(mk)
