A German commissioner has refused to back down from comments he made describing celebrities whose intimate selfies were leaked online as “dumb.”

Günther Oettinger, who will become the Digital Economy & Society commissioner, was answering questions from MEPs at the time, and also said that “Stupidity is something you can only partly save people from.”

A German MEP has since described the new commissioner’s comments as “unbelievable.”

Julia Reda, a member of the left-leaning Pirate Party, wrote on her blog: "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," she added.

Mr Oettinger’s comments referred to the leak of naked pictures of more than 80 famous actresses and pop stars. Users of the 4Chan message board first posted the pictures, which it is believed were taken from the personal cloud storage accounts of the celebrities.

Mr Oettinger appeared to blame the celebrity victims of the ‘hacking’.

"If someone is dumb enough as a celebrity to take a nude photo of themselves and put it online, they surely can't expect us to protect them,” he told MEPs.

"I mean, stupidity is something you can not - or only partly - save people from."

The commissioner’s comments have since drawn widespread criticism for his use of language; although the celebrity selfies were online, they had been stored in private accounts.

Julia Reda described the commissioner’s statement as “a mockery,” and his tone as “aloof and insulting.”

“Günther Oettinger is seriously calling into question whether he is qualified for the job of shaping our digital society for the next five years," she said.