BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The European Union's top justice official was considering Monday whether the 25-nation bloc should ban the use of Nazi symbols after Britain's Prince Harry wore a swastika armband to a costume party.
Franco Frattini, the EU's justice and home affairs commissioner, said he was open to discussing the issue at a Jan. 27 meeting of EU justice ministers.
"It may be worth looking into the possibility of a total ban, a Europe-wide ban," his spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing told reporters. "Commissioner Frattini shares the general feeling of opprobrium on the use of the swastika and other Nazi symbols."
The call came after several German conservatives, socialists and liberal democrats in the European Parliament urged a European ban following a scandal last week over photos of Harry, third in line to the British throne, wearing a Nazi outfit at a costume party.
German Socialist Helmut Kuhne called Harry a "royal idiot" for not knowing the consequences and World War II history linked to the Nazi swastika.
Germany already bans such symbols.
Roscam Abbing said Frattini would urge EU ministers to use the swastika incident to push for agreement on EU-wide rules to combat racism, fascism and anti-Semitism.
A proposal was introduced two years ago but discussions have failed to make headway.
Roscam Abbing said officials would take care not to violate freedom of expression in devising such a ban.
Frattini's decision to look into an EU-wide ban could further embarrass Queen Elizabeth II, who is to lead British commemorations of the Holocaust in London later this month.
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'Dardanidae duri, quae uos a stirpe parentum
prima tulit tellus, eadem uos ubere laeto
accipiet reduces. Antiquam exquirite matrem:
hic domus Aeneae cunctis dominabitur oris,
et nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis.'
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
–Plato–
'Many people, I believe, wish for a society where faith, decency, pro-life convictions and national self-determination within Europe can flourish; and not be swallowed up in a dictatorial EU bureaucracy.'
–Gerry McGeough, Irish Nationalist and POW–