According to the letter from USPE, which represents staff working in the Parliament, a security officer working on the gates of the institution\u2019s Brussels building challenged Van Overtveldt as he attempted to enter with his wife, whose entourage pass for family members had expired. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn response to the security staff\u2019s insistence that he should comply with the institutional rules, he asked to see the badge of the security officer in charge in order to identify her, then angrily threw her document on the floor,\u201d the letter to Metsola, dated, Feb. 16, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSubsequently, when the security guard asked him to be respectful, pointing out that he was talking to a human being, the MEP responded with an offensive remark, comparing her to a pet (his own dog) and thereby humiliating and demeaning her in front of others,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n
Van Overtveldt said that he doesn\u2019t have a dog or a pet of any kind and is \u201cpractically sure I didn\u2019t use that kind of words.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I did so, then certainly that was not appropriate either, that I will immediately admit. But I cannot remember at this moment, it\u2019s a week ago now, what exact words I used. I shouted, without any doubt I shouted, that she had to behave and she had to be calm and more forthcoming,\u201d he went on.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably by raising my voice to the extent I did, maybe I was a little bit intimidating,\u201d said the top lawmaker. \u201cI don\u2019t know how she felt about it. But one should not forget that the way in which she treated the person who was with me \u2026 was also quite offensive to say the least.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the letter from USPE, which represents staff working in the Parliament, a security officer working on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[15856,2000,299,5187,226049,31621],"class_list":["post-773474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-bart-de-wever","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-johan-van-overtveldt","tag-roberta-metsola"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116093890569637527","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}