Euro myths

European Commissioner Margot Wallstrom writes in her blog about how "Euro myths" are turned into facts by British tabloids:

It seems that some journalists have little better to do these days than make up stories about the EU. The Sun recently published an article entitled ‘EU Twits to rename Bombay mix‘. “Nutty EU officials“, it said, wanted to rename the Indian snack Mumbai mix to be more politically correct and were expected to “rule on this by the end of the year“. The article included a quote from the UK‘s Shadow Europe Minister Graham Brady who described it as “the kind of ludicrous regulation that gives Brussels a bad name”. The Sun also claimed that the EU wanted to change Persian rug to Iranian rug, Siamese twins to Thai twins, Peking Duck to Beijing Duck and Lancashire Hotpot to Greater Manchester Hotpot. All of this under the heading ‘You Couldn‘t Make it Up‘. The problem is, they did make it up. Completely. Sometimes these ‘euromyths‘ have at least a grain of truth somewhere, even if is because someone has misunderstood a regulation, if not wilfully misinterpreted it. In this case, I am indebted to David Rennie of the Telegraph who got to the bottom of the story in his blog...

..Harmless fun, you might think, but The Sun and The Mirror published the piece as fact (and The Sun even embellished it by adding more fiction) and no doubt their millions of readers believe every word. I have also seen the piece reproduced in Yahoo News and in numerous blogs, websites, discussion forums and newspapers from India to Canada where it is reported as fact. There‘s an entertaining selection of other ‘Euromyths‘ on the Commission's website.

Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel writes as a guest blogger about the CAP