It may be the silly season, but the latest Euromyth to ruffle right-wing feathers takes silliness to a whole new level. The Express, Mail, Sun and Telegraph unanimously announced at the weekend that Brussels wants to remove the royal crest from British birth certificates and replace it with the hated EU flag. The Mail declared Brits would be “stamped with the EU flag from the cradle to the grave” while the Sun led with the rather lame “B-EU-rths ‘n deaths”.
They gave generous space to Eric Pickles, who fumed:
This imposed Euro-law is part of an aggressive propaganda campaign to bully councils and public institutions into flying the EU flag at every opportunity.
In fact, the Commission simply proposed (back in April) that EU countries recognise each other’s basic documents –such as birth, marriage or company certificates – without the need for translations and special stamps. It also proposed offering people the option of a standard format European certificate when registering a birth or marriage, so they don’t have to translate their documents elsewhere in the EU.
Anyone who’s been through the hassle of translating or legalising certificates for foreign administrations will welcome the move with open arms. Around 1.7 million Brits live in another EU country and around 1 in 8 marriages in the UK are among bi-national couples. The Commission’s proposals would save time, energy and an estimated £280 million a year in legal and administrative fees.
As with most Euromyths, the proposal is not yet law and has to be agreed by national governments and MEPs before becoming so. Even then, the EU format certificates will be purely optional, and no common format – with or without the EU flag – has yet been agreed.
No matter that the proposal was the result of a lengthy public consultation back in 2010, in which the House of Lords, Law Society and others took part. No matter that, according to polls, 74% of Brits are in favour (pdf) of standard formats for civil status documents in all EU member states. No matter that the Conservative Europe Minister had already cautiously welcomed the initiative. All these facts would have stood in the way of a cheap and malicious pop at the EU that was just too good to miss.
We in the UK are of course used to low standards and biased reporting by our press on European matters. In fact we are less likely to trust our national press than any other EU country. Just 18% of Brits say they trust the press while 79% distrust it, less than half the average level of trust in the EU.
But the worst part is that, this time, the Eurosceptic media were not the chief culprits. The whole story was cynically fabricated, spun and sold by a member of the Cabinet to acquiescent journalists to score political points. The Guardian was alone in picking up on and exposing his tricks. Of course, Pickles’ porkies are just the latest unrefined attempt by an ambitious Tory minister to pitch to the UKIP gallery. After Theresa May’s ‘go home’ van, we can sadly only expect more of this nonsense.
* Giles Goodall is a Lib Dem European Parliamentary Candidate for South East England.
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20 Comments
Ironic that Eric Pickles should rant at anyone about “an aggressive propaganda campaign to bully councils and public institutions”, seeing as that’s basically all he’s done for the last 3 years as Local Govt minister.
As a standard EU documents, presumably they *would* have the EU flag on them….
So what bit is ‘myth’ here?
They myth is:
a) That the Royal Crest is being removed, and
b) That people are being forced to have a certificate with an EU flag.
As Giles says the proposal is that people should be given a choice.
And c) that it’s an “imposed Euro-law”, rather than a proposal that won’t happen unless the Parliament and the Council of Ministers sign up to it.
And yet these same myth peddling papers who are the ones that insist the people should have an in out referendum, the result of which has already been skewed by generations of bile spilling from these very same papers.
Almost like they have an agenda……….
@Paul. The myth is that there isn’t really such a thing as an EU flag, Since 1985 the EU uses the Flag of Europe adopted of the Council of Europe (founded by Winston Churchill) in 1955.
In fairness the Sunday Times also reported the Commission clarification version and focused on Pickles looking stupid
@MBoy: Absolutely. Pickles accusing others of bully boy tactics really is the pot calling the kettle black!
@Stuart: Indeed, the Sunday Times is another honourable exception alongside the Guardian for picking up on Pickles’ tricks
Are we being a little disingenuous here? Births, marriages, company formation, and deaths are all high-emotion events and they are also ways that governing entities use to say who “belongs” – they are ways that nations define who the nation is. If you want to abolish a nation, you can do it slowly, by abolishing national symbols of belonging.
If you want to abolish a national symbol, you can do it is small, easy steps. First you provide an optional alternative, then you make it advantageous to choose the alternative and awkward to choose the original, then you make the alternative the default and make people specifically request the original, then you make it a huge hassle to choose the original, then you abolish the original on the grounds that very few people choose it.
It really doesn’t matter that it hasn’t yet become law, does it? It’s the intention that counts, and maybe the Abominable Pickles and the papers got that part of it right. Personally I support a European super-state, but that doesn’t mean I should kid myself that things like this don’t matter, or that they don’t matter to people in nations.
Just looking at my EU standard passport…. that would be the one with the Royal Crest on the front…
There are myth peddlers on both sides of the debate, which is why I’m not looking forward to the referendum when it comes.
The EU flag was approved in 1955 by the Council of Europe (that is not the EU) that was created and run by Churchill at that time. Then in 1985 our democratically elected leaders in all the then EU member states decided that we are going to have it as an EU flag. no conspiracy involved!! tell that to the UK propaganda press!!!
@Dan “There are myth peddlers on both sides of the debate, which is why I’m not looking forward to the referendum when it comes.”
Agree totally, particularly as I do see a need for a vote before we commit to further integration and the implications on sovereignty. However, I would widen it to ‘ALL sides’, as the other EU members, particularly France and Germany are and will not be impartial or passive participants in the UK debate.
Antony Hook concludes :
“As Giles says the proposal is that people should be given a choice.”
But of course Liberal Democrats are the party opposed to giving people choice. This is typical LD cart before horse thinking. Why ‘splatter’ all and sundry legal documents with an EU logo of any kind, if the 2017 referendum goes against staying in the EU, and then incur the expense of taking all the logos off again?
Better to get the referendum sorted first, so we know where we are, before the expense of all this documentation updating surely? Or do politicians just enjoy wasting tax money for its own sake?
“In fact, the Commission simply proposed (back in April) that EU countries recognise each other’s basic documents –such as birth, marriage or company certificates – without the need for translations and special stamps. It also proposed offering people the option of a standard format European certificate when registering a birth or marriage, so they don’t have to translate their documents elsewhere in the EU.”
Dosn’t the former mean there is no need for the latter?
Of course there might be a potential saving. This is the classic argument of centralising bureacracies throughout the ages, something we are quick to oppose in local government but then which gets forgotten by the more fanatic EU supporters in the Lib Dems when it comes to the EU.
I would happily take the crest off and replace it with the EU flag. After all, we have the chance to vote on the EU Commission via the Parliamentary elections and via our national elected Governments. What choice do we have in who the next head of the House of Windsor might be?
I guess that being “given the option” to have a standard document might not mean that one doesn’t get a British document, too. Of course, there may be issues around offering two birth certificates, but it could be that the standard document is simply a certified copy.
The point is to give people the option so they don’t have to go through the rigmarole of getting new versions of all their paperwork. As Martin says, passports have a standard format and you can put any symbol you want on them.
The real scandal is the way this story was spun by a minister – who should know better – using every Europhobe hyperbole in the book. A proposal published months ago following a lengthy period of public consultation is very clearly not a ‘plot’!
@Ian Eiloart “there may be issues around offering two birth certificates, but it could be that the standard document is simply a certified copy.”
Actually today you can get two birth certificates: the free ‘short’ version which is of little use and the chargeable ‘long’ version which is the one you need if you want to use the birth certificate for any thing official. As far as I can see there is no reason why there shouldn’t be a second chargeable option; the EU variant.
A little reading for you, on Brussels, 24.4.2013 COM(2013) 228 final 2013/0119 (COD)
Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on promoting the free movement of citizens and businesses by simplifying the acceptance of certain public documents in the European Union and amending Regulation (EU) No 1024/2012 {SWD(2013) 144 final} {SWD(2013) 145 final} citizens”1 stressed the importance of making Union citizenship effective and put the citizens at the heart of EU policies in the area of justice. Its actions are focused on ‘building a citizens’ Europe’, including through promotion of citizens’ rights, in particular the right to freedom of movement. The related Action Plan2 confirms this mandate and states that a well-functioning European judicial area “should be put at the service of citizens and businesses so as to support
economic activity in the single market (…)”. Against this background, the Action Plan foresees the adoption of a legislative proposal for dispensing with the formalities for the legalisation of public documents between the Member States. In this context, in its Resolution on the Stockholm Programme, the European Parliament considered that the priorities in the field of civil justice must first and foremost meet the needs expressed by individual citizens
and businesses. Therefore, it “calls for a simple and autonomous European system for (…) the abolition of requirements for legalisation of documents”.3
Legal note: This EU multilingual standard form is made available by the authorities of the issuing Member State and may be requested alternatively to the equivalent public document existing in that Member State. It shall not prejudice the use of an equivalent national public document drawn up by the authorities of the issuing Member State. It shall have the same formal evidentiary value as the national equivalent of the issuing Member State, and it shall be used without prejudice to the substantive law of the Member States relating to birth.