IRISH POLITICIANS HAVE banded together to urge the EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger to withdraw his “careless and irresponsible” comments concerning eurozone countries struggling with debt.

This week, during an interview with Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper, Bild, Oettinger discussed the idea of “default sinners” – ie EU countries burdened with heavy debts - having their flags lowered to half-mast in a significant act of symbolism.

The Oireachtas European Affairs Committee has released a statement today encouraging Oettinger to withdraw the offending remarks. It said that while lowering a country’s flag would indeed be a “powerful symbol” it would be “one of arrogance, ignorance and divisiveness that would not reflect the principles of the European Union”.

The Committee said that the Commissioner’s remarks were not just careless, but “irresponsible and inappropriate (and) lacking in an understanding of the complexity of the economic realities and the seriousness of the difficulties faced by ordinary citizens in Ireland and across Europe”.  The statement continued: “A nation’s national flag is a proud symbol of a country and its citizens and should be treated with respect”.

“Ireland and its citizens have had to make sacrifices in order to set our country on course for recovery.  In this respect Ireland and its citizens have done everything that has so far been required of it, both in the interests of our own future and the future of the European Union as a whole.  Ireland needs the European Union and the European Union needs Ireland,” it added.

Oettinger has defended himself on the issue, saying that he did not recommend the idea but simply discussed it: “In the interview I did not propose this idea, nor did I support it. Moreover, I did not refer to any particular country,” he said.

Read the full statement by the Committee on European Affairs>

Read more: German commissioner insists he doesn’t support ‘half-mast’ idea>