May 20, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Irish citizens are being subjected to “fear and intimidation” in the lead-up to the May 22 referendum on same-sex “marriage,” say a group of Members of the European Parliament in an open letter to the European Union’s president.

Friday’s vote to amend the Irish Constitution to allow “gay marriage” will not be “free and fair” because the country’s political parties, media, and police are openly lobbying for the Yes side, the six MEPs charge in a May 19 letter to President Martin Schulz.

“What has taken place in Ireland over the past few months is unacceptable for an EU member state,” they write in a request for Schulz to intervene.

The MEPs claim that all Irish political parties are campaigning for the Yes side, and “have threatened their members with expulsion unless they follow the party line.” Ireland’s current president is Michael Higgins of the Fianna Faíl Party.

Click "like" if you want to defend true marriage.

Multinational corporations based in Ireland are also telling Irish employees to campaign for the Yes side, a “veiled threat” at a time when the nation’s economy is in a slump, they state.

And “senior media figures” lobby for the Yes side, while the media ignore a Supreme Court ruling that both sides of the debate be given equal coverage, the MEPs allege.

The government has turned a blind eye to the actions of a “foreign billionaire” who has “channeled millions of dollars to the yes side” in contravention of Irish electoral law.

“Most disturbing of all, the national police force is actively supporting the Yes side,” the MEPs write, including allowing Yes side photo ops at police stations, an action “condemned” by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman. Such partisanship is “particularly sinister” because in Ireland the police are responsible for “securing the integrity of voting stations and the vote counting procedure.”

With the exception of the non-aligned Edouard Ferrand of France’s Front National, the MEPs signing the letter are members of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group. They are Beatrix von Storch and Arne Gericke of Germany, Slovakia’s Branislav Skripek, and Poland’s Marek Jurek and Kazimier Ujazdowski.

President Schulz, a German, is a member of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament.

If passed, the referendum will amend the Irish Constitution to redefine marriage as being between two persons irrespective of sex, and will make Ireland the first country to approve “gay marriage” by popular vote.