Jan van Aartsen, the leader of the Dutch (right-of-center) VVD is now attacking the behavior of the EU’s foreign policy boss in Jeddah (see my earlier post below), as well as the decision of Holland’s foreign minister to join him on that trip.

The Brussels Journal takes up the story, and highlights the way in which the Turkish prime minister’s thuggish reaction to the cartoon affair may well – and deservedly so – have imperiled his country’s attempts to join the EU:

“Today, however, the VVD leader questioned whether Turkey should be allowed into the EU, given the reaction of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the Danish cartoons. Mr Erdogan had called the cartoons “insulting” and demanded that legal action be taken against the cartoonists and the publishers. “If this is the way he thinks and if he is going to give us lessons, then it will be very difficult for Turkey to join the EU,” the VVD leader says in an interview with the Dutch weekly Elsevier. He also criticized the visits this week of Ben Bot, the Dutch Foreign Minister, to Saudi-Arabia and Qatar. Mr van Aartsen does not see the point of visiting these countries at the moment.”

Dead right.

Read the rest of the Brussels Journal piece for other gems including the behavior of Austria’s minister for European affairs (hint: it’s not good) and (for those old enough to remember 1968) the latest chapter in the remarkable, and consistently repulsive, career of Daniel (“Danny the Red”) Cohn-Bendit.