Burning issues on hot line

Date: 14/11/1996

Thanks to the Euro Citizen Action Service (ECAS) for getting to the heart of the matter.

Its hot line which opened recently to answer EU queries from Mr and Mrs General Public has been fielding endless calls on the issues that trouble Euro folk these days.

So far more than 200 have phoned in to support ECAS' calls for a Charter of European Citizenship and Fundamental Rights, and to seek information about topical Union issues.

But one caller floored the ECAS staff manning the phones by demanding to know who killed Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme in 1986 and what was the EU doing about it? Failing to illicit definitive answers on either point, the allegedly very drunken Euro Swede then asked what was being done about taxation on alcohol, an issue of huge concern to the Nordic population.

ECAS took it all in its stride, naturally, and if you want to know why the EU has not sent a task force to find out who killed President Kennedy in 1963, or why the EU's International High Representative was not invited to attend Boris Yeltsin's open-heart surgery, the hot line will remain in operation until the Dublin summit next month.