Afrasianet - A French member of the European Parliament has called on his country to restore the Statue of Liberty from the United States because it no longer represents the values that prompted France to present the statue to it. 

Center-left MP Rafael Glucksmann told a meeting of his left-wing movement: "Give us back the Statue of Liberty. We will say to the Americans who chose to stand with the tyrants and to the Americans who fired the researchers for demanding scientific freedom: give us back the Statue of Liberty." 

"We gave it to you as a gift, but you seem to despise it. So it would be appropriate for him to be here in his homeland," he said, criticizing Trump's change in U.S. policy on the war in Ukraine.

He also attacked Trump for cuts he made at U.S. think tanks, which led to a French government initiative to attract some of them to work in France.

The second thing we're going to tell Americans is if you want to expel your best researchers, if you want to expel all the people who have made their country the world's leading power through their freedoms, their sense of creativity, their love of skepticism and research, we will welcome them.

The White House rejected Glucksmann's call to return the Statue of Liberty, saying France would have "spoken German" without U.S. help in World War II.

White spokeswoman Caroline Levitt told reporters: "My advice to this low-level French politician is to remind him that only because of the USA the French don't speak German at the moment, so they should be very grateful to our great country."

The Statue of Liberty was unveiled in New York on October 28, 1886, marking the centenary of the American Declaration of Independence. It was a gift from the French people to America. It was designed by Frenchman Auguste Bartholdi.

Paris has a much smaller version of the statue located on a small island in the Seine River in Paris.