DOZENS OF MEPS RECEIVE DEATH THREATS: In the first 12 days of his term as U.S. president, Donald Trump received more than 12,000 death threats. Compared to that figure, most â though not all â members of the European Parliament live danger-free lives. Playbook talked to a dozen MEPs who have faced threats of murder and rape. Only one MEP said police caught the person who made the threats. The number of threats ranged from one to âmore than 100â against a single MEP. One would-be murderer likes to repeat their threat on a monthly basis, a female MEP told Playbook. Email is the preferred medium for those delivering threats, followed by Twitter, then Facebook, although four lawmakers said they were threatened via anonymous letters. Creative intimidation included threats âto come and blow up my office, multiple rapes, cut me off by my knees, send in some IS [Islamic State] fighters,â said one female MEP. Hans-Olaf Henkel, a German MEP who left the Alternative for Germany (AfD), said he has been told by someone claiming to represent the âAfD Armee Fraktionâ â an apparent homage to the Red Army Faction â that theyâ™re coming for his family. âWeâ™ll get them,â warned a typed letter seen by Playbook. Henkel told POLITICO, âI havenâ™t felt threatened for one second.â The European Parliament and Twitter did not respond to Playbookâ™s request for information regarding handling of death threats. UKIP FINDS STAFF DON’T LIKE TO WORK FOR FREE: The UKIP-led Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE) is in disarray after Yasmine Dehaene, the partyâ™s executive director, walked out of the group. In her parting email, seen by Playbook, Dehaene wrote that she and a colleague â Willem Toutenhoofd â had worked âpro bonoâ for three months, and that UKIP broke promises to pay âoutstanding urgent bills from the lawyers, the accountant and the rent.â The problems stem from the European Parliament demanding ADDE pay back â¬172,655 of misspent EU money, after the party splashed EU cash on opinion polls supporting Nigel Farageâ™s attempts to enter the U.K. parliament in 2015. Roger Helmer, the UKIP MEP who leads ADDE, said he was unaware if audits were still ongoing and who was owed money by ADDE. Dehaene, who worked as a stress management consultant before her role at ADDE, left one final parting gift to UKIP: Her out-of-office email message directs all questions to Helmer. BREXIT 1.0: There is a Brexit nobody voted for â one in which the EU was not even an interested party. Nature Communications has published new research from Sanjeev Gupta, a professor at Imperial College London, on how the British Isles separated from the rest of Europe 450,000 years ago. Beyond a massive chalk ridge (that we now know as Dover) there was a lake that grew and grew until the whole channel flooded. Clearly, Britain was trying to get away from Europe long before Jean-Claude Juncker came on the scene. BISHOPS GET PROACTIVE ON ADDRESSING ABUSE: The bishops of Belgium announced earlier this week that Saturday April 8 will be the National Day for Victims of Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, the Brussels Times reported. Awareness-raising events of this nature are not uncommon. What is special about this initiative is that it comes from within the church, and its top echelons at that. BREXIT IS NO JOKE: Stand-up comedians are finding that anti-Brexit jokes that go down well in London arenâ™t as amusing elsewhere. Comic Marcus Brigstocke, who has been touring the U.K. with a set that includes 20 minutes of material on Brexit, told the BBC that audience members had been walking out âevery night.â FEUD OF THE WEEK Michael Howard vs Spain. The former leader of the Conservative Party took the spat over Gibraltar to a whole new level when he said Theresa May would not hesitate to go to war to protect Gibraltar from those pesky Spaniards. While May and (in something of a surprise) Boris Johnson sought to play down Howardâ™s comments, saying that they wanted to discuss Gibraltarâ™s future rather than send in the warships, the Sun newspaper, that bastion of calm, ran with the headline âUp yours señors!â â a nod to its famous anti-EU headline âUp yours Delors!â Classy. [howardgibbon] BY THE NUMBERS … Watching the handling and reactions to various Brexit bombshells over the past week, one clear pattern emerged: Brexit players with deep Brussels experience tended to come off best. We tallied the combined years of ministerial or EU-related experience to verify the point. 18: Michael Barnierâ™s time, in years, as national minister, European commissioner and EU negotiator. 14: Alfonso Dastisâ™ time, in years, as European Court of Justice and EU affairs adviser, ambassador to the EU and national minister. 6: Boris Johnsonâ™s years of experience, five of them as an EU affairs journalist, less than a year as a minister. 4: David Davisâ™ years spent as a minister, only nine months of that time in the 21st century. GAFFES AND LAUGHS UK IN BRUSSELS NEEDS A TWITTER MANAGER: Required competencies include: âSeeing the Big Picture,â âCollaborating and Partneringâ and âBuilding Capability for Allâ (capitalization is all theirs). The job advert says this is âa particularly exciting time to join UKRep as the U.K. prepares to leave the EU.â DID YOU KNOW? Following the departures of Ann Cahill and Suzanne Lynch, thereâ™s no full-time print journalist left in Brussels for an Irish publication. Sarah Collins freelances, but it does seem like Ireland is underplaying its hand in these Brexit days, notwithstanding RTE TVâ™s Tony Connelly and online tech journalist Jennifer Baker. SLAP ATTACK: President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte is on the rampage again. Unlike anyone suspected of drug links, whoâ™s liable to be killed on the spot by Filipino police, EU leaders face a different risk from Duterte. He told reporters Friday that he would want to bring EU leaders to Manila to âslapâ those âsons of bitches,â over their views abour drug rehabilitation. HITLER BY NUMBERS: A Belgian childrenâ™s book was removed from shops after complaints that it contained a drawing of Adolf Hitler. The Belgian publisher of âKleuren op Codeâ (Coloring by Numbers), which features drawings of famous people to be colored in, said a âpainful mistakeâ had been made when the book was compiled and printed in India. âI think the man who made the drawings picked a few famous people from another book. Unfortunately, Hitler was among them. Perhaps he didnâ™t know him,â a spokesperson for the publisher told local media. OOPS … The Israeli Labor Party will delay the election of a new party chair by a day because of a Britney Spears concert scheduled at the same venue. WHO€™S UP ALFONSO DASTIS: The Spanish foreign minister and Brussels insider has been lecturing the British political class on diplomacy over the Gibraltar spat. PHILIPPE POUTOU: The French Trotskyist presidential candidate was the most chilled of the 11 presidential debaters this week. WHO€™S DOWN CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY: The independent university in Budapest is facing closure. JEROEN DIJSSELBLOEM: The Eurogroup president continued to annoy potential supporters in his bid to stay in post: this time by declining to speak with EU lawmakers on the Greek bailout.
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