International

The European Commission is once again funding a campaign, this time to promote flowers. Apart from the question of whether it’s really necessary for the campaign to be financed from our taxes, it’s also a pretty wrongheaded campaign, one at which many people take offence. Instead of imposing additional taxes on countries like the Netherlands, the Commission would be better cutting its own spending, beginning with support for this stupid flower campaign.

A few years ago the SP condemned in no uncertain terms the EU-funded distribution of fruit to Dutch schools. It’s good for children to learn how to eat healthily, but we don’t see this as a task for Brussels. Pumping money about in this fashion leads only to misuse and bureaucracy. This time Brussels is financing a campaign via which you can win a prize, if you guess your girlfriend’s favourite flowers and leave a message on her Facebook page. If you’re right, you get the chance to win her a nice bouquet.

I was put on to this campaign by someone who emailed me to say that he found it discriminatory, because he was certainly not on Facebook and why can only Facebook users take part? The answer from the campaign organisation was that anyone can set up a Facebook account, so there’s no question of discrimination. So first you have to tell your girlfriend that she has to set up a Facebook account so that you can then give her a nice surprise.

The campaign is, however, also extremely role-reinforcing: real men want to send their girlfriends flowers and girlfriends love flowers. Pity for women who want to take part and send their boyfriend flowers, to say nothing of friends who want to give each other flowers.

This week the European Court of Auditors published its report on EU spending in 2013. It’s expected that the Court of Auditors will once more reject the accounts because of too many irregularities. This concerns a great deal more money than the amount used to finance the flower campaign, but it is precisely this kind of campaign that shows that the Commission are completely at a loose end as to what to do with the existing resources. Yet they are asking the Netherlands for an additional payment of more than €640 million. I don’t believe it. First of all let’s put an end to this practice of pumping money around.

Photo: Jaydot (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)