Paris, 19 February 2022

The Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, expressed outrage at the apparent “Sieg Heil” salute by Angel Dzhambazki, member of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament (EP).

Dzhambazki had served in such Parliamentary Committees as Foreign Affairs, Legal Affairs, Disinformation, and is also in the EU Delegation for Relations with the United States.

He had invited Samuels in 2014 to address the EP Education Committee on the Wiesenthal Centre’s monitoring of hate literature at Arab Book Fairs. He there pledged to ensure a campaign against antisemitism and bigotry in his own country, through his own Bulgarian National Movement (IMRO).

“Our session stressed as the most worrying, the English, French, German and Spanish versions of the Arabic texts, for distribution in schools of the Muslim diaspora across Europe... A British MEP seated at my presentation, passed the warning on to then Prime Minister David Cameron, who called for immediate measures,” stated Samuels.

Sadly, over the years, Dzhambazki’s politics seem to have changed.

His membership in the EP led to an announcement from his ECR Group that they “remain in fighting against all forms of extremism and totalitarian ideology in Europe and beyond.”

Others claim that CCTV shows Dzhambazki’s gesture as a simple departing wave, following proceedings on Poland and Hungary.

“If the enquiry shows it to be a Nazi salute, Dzhambazki should be divested as MEP... In addition, in view of his role in the EU’s relations with the United States, he should be banned from entry,” concluded Samuels.