Czech foreign minister, Cyril Svoboda is calling for EU compensation for Denmark for trade and other economic damage caused by the muslim backlash over the Muhammed Cartoons Controversy, arguing that the EU hould signal its strong loyalty to Copenhagen, as well as to the principle of freedom of expression.

“One of the concrete forms of our support could be a financial compensation from the EU for a negative impact on exports and trade of Danish products,” Mr Svoboda told Mlada fronta dnes, a leading Czech daily.

He is planning to lobby for the plan at the nearest meeting of the EU foreign ministers, scheduled for 27 February, which should also adopt some form of response to the recent dispute.

Mr Svoboda argues that the EU’s reaction so far was quite vague, and while he understands the cartoons must have been viewed as provocative, the reaction by muslim groups in several countries was unacceptable and Europe should make this clear.

Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission also expressed his solidarity with Denmark on Monday in a speech to MEPs at Strasbourg.

He said the country has been treated unfairly in the conflict, while stressing that freedom of speech is absolutely non-negotiable in Europe.

The president also gave an interview to offending newspaper Jyllands-Posten in which he defended free speech as “a founding value of our European open society.”

“We are in favour of a dialogue, but that does not mean that we will give up on the values that are non-negotiable,” he said.

MEPs have also expressed solidarity with Denmark in Wednesday’s debate on the issue.

Centre-right German MEP Hans-Gert Poettering said the protests in the Muslim world, which claimed three new victims in Pakistan on Wednesday, had not been spontaneous.

“They were organised by repressive regimes months after the publication of the cartoons,” Mr Poettering said.

Brandishing a stack of newspaper cuttings from the Muslim world, Mr Poettering also said he had found “hundreds of cartoons making a mockery of our world”, and underlined that “tolerance is no one-way-street, but has to go in both directions”.

MEPs also came out strongly against a commission proposal to make media sign up to a voluntary “code of conduct” for reporting on Islam and other religions.

“The press has to draw its own code of conduct, we cannot do it for them,” said German Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

More worryingly, Javier Solana - who is currently visiting the Middle East in an attempt to soothe tensions - signalled the EU might be supportive of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference’s bid to ban blasphemy via the UN.

Two steps forward, one step back.

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