In which Bruno Waterfield adds 1 to 1 and gets 4.7 million

The Daily Telegraph has strived for yet higher standards of investigative journalism, publishing its well-researched allegations into the EU's attempts to force the UK to put EU flags on war cemeteries and memorials.

• The Daily Telegraph: EU accused of 'hijacking' Remembrance Sunday

The story was so clearly nonsensical that even The Daily Express didn't bother copying it for its edition the next day. The Telegraph claimed that:

"The EU has been accused of trying to "hijack" Remembrance Sunday with a £4.7 million plan to put euro-branded commemorative plaques marking "European integration" on war cemeteries and memorials."

This refers to proposed piece of European legislation (full text available here) which provides for an EU-wide heritage label that could be used to

"Enhance the value and profile of sites which have played a key role in the history and the building of the European Union."

The scheme builds on a previous purely intergovernmental project of a similar nature, launched in 2006, in which 17 EU member states plus Switzerland participate. A total of 64 sites have been awarded the label so far, including the Acropolis in Athens, the shipyards of Gdansk and Cluny Abbey. The European Commission was explicitly invited by the Council of Ministers in November 2008 to come up with a proposal for an EU-wide version of the label.

The claim that the latest proposed legislation will lead to EU flags being foisted upon British war cemeteries and memorials seems to have originated with a quote by a European Commission official, which mentioned that

"Places of remembrance clearly have their place in European history, not only as memorials to those who lost their lives but also as places where visitors can reflect on how and why Europe has successfully avoided major conflicts for more than 65 years."

The fact that war memorials could qualify for the European heritage label clearly does not mean that the EU will unilaterally decide to plaster them over war graves. In fact, the voluntary nature of the scheme is emphasised throughout the proposal. Article 4 explicitly states:

"The action shall be open to the participation of the Member States of the European Union. This participation shall be on a voluntary basis."

The proposed procedure for granting a European heritage label to a site of interest also involves an application to an independent EU-wide panel of twelve cultural experts, with pre-selection of the proposals being carried out by each individual Member State. Naturally, that means that only sites the host country thinks should have the European heritage label applied will be eligible for inclusion.

The European Commission sent a letter to The Telegraph pointing out this fairly obvious fact: 

"If the panel receives no nominations from the UK, no sites in the UK would display the European Heritage Label. The EU cannot unilaterally impose the heritage label on anyone."

To summarise - participation is voluntary, sites have to be proposed and are not chosen by the EU and each Member State retains a veto over the label being awarded to a site within its national territory. To suggest the EU has already drawn up a list of UK 'targets' is plainly ridiculous, and only serves to emphasise the point that UKIP MEP Paul Nuttall, who is quoted in the article as saying that the EU wants to "impose its views on war sites such as the Menin Gate", clearly did not bother to read the proposal before voting against it.

The article's author, Bruno Waterfield, also references the cost of the project - arriving at the figure of £4.7 million for a period of six years, although the proposal itself earmarks some €2 million (£1.7 million) for a period of three years. Perhaps he called Open Europe or The Taxpayers' Alliance for a calculation?

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Update: When the Member States formally adopted the proposal in July 2011, the UK was the only EU country to abstain from voting. The other 26 Member States voted to approve of the Heritage Label scheme.

Crazier by the Dozen

Recently, a number of British media outlets have picked up on a rumour that the EU is set to ban selling eggs by the dozen:

• The Mail on Sunday: EU to ban selling eggs by the dozen
• The Daily Telegraph: EU to ban selling eggs by dozen
• BBC: UK scrambles to to keep 'dozen eggs' in EU battle

The story, as far as I can tell, broke in the trade magazine The Grocer (the original report is here). The general thrust of all these articles is that new EU food labelling legislation supposedly prevents retailers from selling eggs by number, and instead have to sell them by weight alone. The Mail on Sunday even claimed:

"Until now, Britain has been exempt from EU regulations that forbid the selling of goods by number."

This story even at first glance seems so ridiculous it is surprising it was picked up at all. Clearly, the European Union has never banned the selling of eggs by the number. Any visit across the Channel would have provided living proof of eggs being sold by the dozen across Europe. Moreover, the new legislation that has drawn the ire of the Righteous Forces of British Measures does not mean the end of any non-existent UK opt-out and it won't ban selling eggs by the dozen in the future.

The directive in question (which has not yet entered into force, but the proposed text can be read here), does not in fact deal with the quantity in which foods are sold but applies to information that should be displayed on food labelling. It specifically states that the objective of the regulation is that:

"It should be ensured that consumers are appropriately informed as regards food they consume."

In response to the media uproar, the European Parliament itself also issued a press release stating unequivocally that:

"Selling eggs by the dozen will not be illegal under the terms of the amendments adopted by the European Parliament to EU food labelling proposals.  Labels will still be able to indicate the number of food items in a pack, whether of eggs, bread rolls or fish fingers."

Faced with the sheer lunacy of what they were accusing the EU of, various media outlets quickly backtracked. The Daily Mail on July 6th published a piece by the editor of The Grocer, Adam Leyland, in which he claimed that

"We do not believe the European Parliament set out to ban such measurements. European legislation can be complex, vague, byzantine and open to different interpretation by different member states."

Firstly, that exposes the Mail's own headline the previous Sunday as a complete sham. Secondly, laws are always open to interpretation - that's why there is a judiciary; UK national legislation hardly reads like Harry Potter. Thirdly, the proposed regulation did not even purport to ban anything other than misleading food labels, and did not concern itself with the quantity in which food is sold. Lastly, it is clearly impossible to sell eggs other than by a fixed number without breaking their shells and siphoning off the egg white to make for clearly rounded quantities.

All the proposed regulation did was state that food packaging should display the net weight. It doesn't ban selling food stuffs by the number, nor displaying the number on the label. Legislation is open to interpretation but how any national government would have read into the directive that eggs cannot be sold by the number is beyond me. Since eggs are already weighed before being sold - and then sorted into a category based on their size - the whole thing really was a storm in a teacup.

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The topic was also covered by Tabloid Watch, EUTopia, Angry Mob and Liberal Conspiracy.

A quick Google search in French and Dutch seems to suggest mainstream media in at least some other parts of Europe either did not pick up on the story at all or did so in response to the Daily Mail's inane allegations.