All your questions answered via the Commission’s E-mail hotline

Date: 18/04/1996

THE response to the creation of the European Commission's Questions and Answers E-mail Hotline (No Query Too Big or Too Small) has been overwhelming.

It demonstrates just how important the link is between the so-called faceless bureaucrats and the men and women in the street.

European Voice staff have been given privileged access to the QAEH(NQTBOTS) files and discovered that the range of issues which concern EU citizens is little short of staggering.

With full authorisation from the hotline director, we now reprint some of the concerns of the public about how Europe works (or sometimes does not!) and, more importantly, the answers to the questions they raise.

Why, in EU parlance, is lamb called sheepmeat and pork called pigmeat when beef remains beef? Surely it should be cowmeat?

Mr G.K., Guildford, Surrey, England.

Dear Mr G.K., Thank you for your most interesting question. Our most interesting answer is as follows: lamb is called sheepmeat to avoid confusion between lamb the lamb and lamb the baby sheep. To call the meat lamb would denote meat from the younger animal, excluding the more mature cuts.

For clarity's sake, it was decided that when talking of lamb in the sense of all meat from sheep, it would be practical to call it sheepmeat.

In the case of pigs, the term pork was deemed religiously sensitive and the appellation pigmeat was adopted. However, this term excludes meat from baby piggies, which should be described as pigletmeat.

For the purposes of the EU, however, pigmeat means all meat from pigs, except where sliced as bacon. In these cases it is known as streaky unsmoked pigmeat, or lean thincut pigmeat.

The expression has not caught on in the UK, however, where snack bars persist in advertising “bacon 'n' eggs” instead of the officially correct “thincutpigmeat 'n' eggs”.

Thanks to your letter Mr G.K., we are now actively considering bringing EU cattle terminology into line. Our proposal is that, in future, beef will be referred to as cowmeat, or even dairycowmeat as appropriate. A further refinement will be the demarcation of madcowmeat or maddairycowmeat, although we believe the term dairycowmilk would be superfluous and over-bureaucratic.

Why can I still fly to Florida 14 times for the price of one return fare from Brussels to Stockholm? Isn't it time air fares came down in Europe? What is going on?

Mrs S.L., Brussels, Belgium.

Dear Mrs S.L., Thank you for your most interesting questions. The simple answer to the first one is market forces. Have you ever thought that if it's so cheap to fly to America, it obviously isn't worth going there?

Let's face it, airlines are just like any other retailers: they will pitch prices as high as the market will stand and, quite frankly, nobody is going to pay much for a long journey to get mugged in a rental car in Miami, or insulted in a yellow cab in New York.

You see, sky-high air fares in Europe are a guarantee of quality. Would you buy an Armani suit or a Gucci handbag if they were available at bargain-basement prices? Of course you wouldn't. You want to pay through the nose for style and a name.

The same goes for air fares. Deep discounts on knee-crunching economy class runs to Helsinki would take the edge off the trip - you don't want people to think you're a cheapskate! Try it on the cocktail party circuit: mention Stockholm, Copenhagen, Rome or any of the other ludicrously expensive places to fly to in Europe and see how much more impressed your friends are than when you mention Florida or California. Everybody flies to those places, which raises the question of whether they do so because fares are cheap, or whether fares are cheap because they do so.

Secondly, you ask if air fares should come down in Europe? Well, obviously, from the above, we think not. Cheaper fares would lose European cities the cachet they have as desirable destinations. As to what's going on, nobody is prepared to commit themselves on that one!

Why are there so many Eurocrats in Brussels? Do we really needs vast hoards of over-paid officials?

Miss B.N., Dublin, Ireland.

Dear Miss B.N., Thank you for your quite interesting question. But you are quite wrong.

It is a myth that there are vast hoards of us. Did you know that the entire European Commission secretariat is smaller than Le Touquet District Council's works study department? Or the Piraeus port sanitation authority? Or the Utrecht health and safety planning subcommittee?

Also, we only have one official for every 30,000 people in Europe. And if that was the ratio of waiters to guests at the average cocktail party you attend in Dublin, Miss B.N., I think you would be one of the first to complain!

No, if anything we need far more Eurocrats to give you, the citizen, the Europe you demand.

Is it true that it takes 220 European Commission officials to fit a light bulb - one to screw it in and 219 to screw it up?

Mr P.G., Hamburg, Germany.

Dear Mr P.G., No it isn't! The correct answer is 50, depending on the size of the bulb and the height of the ceiling. Actually, we here in Brussels are pretty fed up, if you must know, with these constant allegations that half the people could do twice as much work in a quarter of the time four times more efficiently.

This is the kind of thing that gets right up our noses here in the Questions and Answers Information Troubleshooting Personal Contact Working Group, and I speak not just for myself but for my 600 colleagues when I say that we are determined to set the record straight.

I am sending you a copy of the letter we have sent to Miss B.N. in Dublin along the same lines.

When will the Commission stop talking about creating jobs and get on with the business of doing so?

Miss J.A., Lisbon, Portugal.

Dear Miss J.A., Thank you for your most insolent letter. We are doing our best. This week we have set up the Jobs Emergency Hotline for those in need of work anywhere in the EU. It employs 1800 people, which has cut the Union's dole queue to a little over

17 million in one go! Next week our EU-wide network of Commission soup kitchens will employ another 5,000 people, so you can see we are more than doing our bit. What are you doing?