The real truth on bananas and Euromyths

Dan Hannan's recent blog on the Telegraph website discusses the scrapping of EU regulations on some fruit and vegetables and claims that many Europhiles have consistently denied the existence of these rules and are now therefore trapped in some kind of Orwellian double speak.

He uses my blog as evidence and quotes the following: "From silly stories (such as the EP legislating that all bananas be straight) to more sinister ones (that ratifying the Lisbon Treaty would lead to armed foreign police patrolling British streets) no opportunity, no matter how far-fetched, is missed to portray the EU as an evil empire."

But the truth is that the European Parliament has indeed never legislated that all bananas be straight. Quite apart from the fact that it was the Council of Ministers (i.e. national governments of EU countries) rather than Parliament that requested the rules, those rules anyway simply gave various classifications to bananas and didn't, as was often claimed, require all bananas to be straight. As I said on my website, this was in fact an industry driven initiative introduced so traders could be certain as to what they were ordering. If anyone is any doubt, and is as pedantic as myself, they can read the rules for themselves here.

Now, I'm certain Dan Hannan and his fellow Eurosceptics will still argue that legislation on bananas was never necessary and that national governments should not have requested it. It is certainly true that the very existence of the rules has caused the European Union considerable and unnecessary embarrassment (so Hannan must be disappointed that they are to be abolished!). Indeed, the Commission has now agreed with them. Nonetheless, Hannan's accusations that I have been misleading people on this issue, actually reinforces the point I am trying to make about Euromyths.

Euromyths exist because Eurosceptics deliberately distort or mislead, exaggerate or omit, and do not bother with the whole truth, as was the case when Hannan quoted me on his blog. Some may think this is a trivial matter, but what of the other story in the quote (armed foreign police patrolling British streets)? What of the invented quotes about Jean Monnet or Godfrey Boom's attempts to convince people there was going to be a shortage of New Zealand butter? How about The EU banning Peking Duck, or changing the name of Bombay Mix or EU rules forcing paramedics to stop work to have breaks? The list goes on and on.

The point of highlighting these is not to undermine Eurosceptic arguments about more serious issues (as Hannan suggests) but to publish the truth and ask why, if Eurosceptics have any serious arguments against our membership of the EU, they have to resort to myth, invention and distortions of the truth?