The EU’s next digital commissioner has been criticised for blaming the female celebrity victims for having their nude selfies hacked.

Discussing the recent hacks and public leaks of celebrity’s intimate photographs during a meeting in Brussels on Monday, Günther Oettinger, who will become the EU’s commissioner for digital economy and society in November, said:

“Stupidity is something you can only partly save people from.”

In response German MEP Julia Reda posted a video showing Oettinger’s comments and complained:

“The person applying to be in charge of shoring up trust in the internet so that Europeans do more business online, just blamed people whose personal data was accessed and spread without authorisation.

“He placed the moral blame for that crime squarely on the victims rather than the perpetrators.”

Dozens of celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, Victoria Justice, and Rihanna, have had intimate naked photographs leaked onto the internet in recent weeks after hackers gained access to their personal cloud storage in what has been dubbed “The Fappening”.

The images have been slowly leaked onto the internet message board 4Chan since 31 August, with personal videos and photographs of stars including Nina Dobrev and Zoe Kazan appearing online in the last week, and the hackers reporting that there are leaks from many more celebrities to come.