Commission forced to apologise for calendar mix-up.

The European Commission cannot seem to shake off some fuss about a 2011 calendar that it sent out to schools in December. The three million calendars, sent out at a cost of €5 million to 21,000 schools, omitted to mention Christian holidays while listing Jewish and Muslim religious festivals. 

Christian Democrat politicians in national capitals and the European Parliament have been berating the Commission for the error. Ben Knapen, the Dutch EU affairs minister, has raised the issue with the Commission, while Othmar Karas, an Austrian centre-right MEP, and Elisabeth Jeggle, a German centre-right MEP, have demanded explanations.

The calendar, which the Commission had produced for the past seven years, is the fruit of collaboration between various Commission departments and the European Economic and Social Committee. But because the calendar contains a lot of information about consumer rights, the lead department is the Commission’s directorate-general for health and consumers.

So John Dalli, the commissioner for health and consumer policy, is the man in the firing line who is now sending out the apologies. Which is a rich irony, since Dalli once described himself the “father confessor” to his colleagues in the Christian Democrat party of Malta – one of the EU’s more religious member states.

Dalli will not need a Commission calendar to tell him that 10 February is a national holiday in Malta, commemorating the occasion that St Paul is supposed to have been shipwrecked off the island.

Click Here: Cheap France Rugby Jersey