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		German diplomat condemned by MEP Monday 1 September 2003 Today in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, East Midlands MEP Roger Helmer condemned a German diplomat in Estonia, Mr. Carsten Wilms, for a clear violation of the Vienna Convention, which governs the behaviour of diplomats in host countries. A week earlier, Helmer had been in Jogeva, a small town in Estonia, whose EU referendum will take place on September 14th. Carsten Wilms was travelling with the EU campaign bus, and made a speech strongly in favour of accession. The Vienna Convention (1961) forbids diplomats from interfering in the internal affairs of host countries. The European Commission has spent large sums of tax-payers money on promoting YES votes in accession-state referendums. In Jogeva last week, the EU roadshow included a coach and several smaller vehicles, painted in EU blue with yellow stars, and a jazz band (which bizarrely played "Land of Hope and Glory"). They had also hired a number of promotion girls, in EU campaign uniforms, who were distributing balloons and handfuls of propaganda. One piece of propaganda was a glossy post-card featuring a male model and headlined "Vote YES for sexier men". Helmer is Patron of the "Fairness in the Estonian Referendum Fund", which has raised voluntary donations in an attempt to balance the huge sums spent by the EU Commission and Estonian government. Nevertheless the YES campaign has at least twenty times the funding of the tiny NO campaign -- some estimates put it at 50 times. Yet ironically the NO Campaign has been accused of "accepting foreign money", despite the fact that the much larger YES campaign also gets a large part of its funding from a foreign source -- Brussels and the EU taxpayer. Helmer called on the President of the EU parliament, Irish MEP Pat Cox, to write to member state Foreign Ministers calling on them to respect their obligations under the Vienna Convention.