There are two sides (and two chauffeurs) to every story

Date: 15/02/1996

It's not just tax-free petrol that is on the skids in Euro-land. Commissioner Erkki Liikanen shocked his colleagues recently by suggesting that two chauffeurs for each of them was one chauffeur too many.

Surely one driver was enough for each of the 20 Commissioners, he suggested. Yes yes, everyone readily agreed, just one chauffeur ... at one time. But you can't expect one driver to work round the clock, so there always has to be a second one on stand-by.

Social Affairs Commissioner Pádraig Flynn, it is reported, bravely questioned this worthy chauffeur quota cut proposal, doubtless on the twin grounds that it would worsen the unemployment figures and hinder the fight against social exclusion by reducing the numbers of ordinary citizens who get to drive some very fancy motor cars.

Not so, says Liikanen: half the Commissioners' chauffeurs should simply be returned to the car pool to do their chauffeuring for other officials instead of hanging around for hours, if not days, on the off-chance that their personal master or mistress needs ferrying somewhere.

Liikanen's point raises an obvious question: just how much official driving about do

Commissioners do to justify keeping a 'spare' chauffeur?

In any case, it is no secret that some Commissioners actually can't wait for the weekends when they can dismiss their drivers and leap behind the steering wheel themselves.