The European Commission has taken down a video clip promoting its enlargement policy following complaints that the clip was racist.

The clip, which was uploaded on YouTube last week, shows a European woman wearing a yellow tracksuit looking like she is about to be attacked by three martial arts experts from China, India and Brazil.

The woman surrounds herself with eleven doubles to form an image to suggest the stars on the European Union flag. The three would-be assailants then drop their aggressive stances, suggesting that they are all to sit down together for a peaceful discussion.

Stefano Sannino, the director-general of the Commission’s enlargement department, which commissioned and published the clip, issued a statement today saying: “We have received a lot of feedback on our latest video clip, including from people concerned about the message it was sending.”

Martial arts plot

The statement says that the clip was meant to target “through social networks and new media, a young audience (16-24) who understand the plots and themes of martial arts films and video games”. Reactions of these target audiences to the clip were positive, according to the statement.

“The clip was absolutely not intended to be racist and we obviously regret that it has been perceived in this way. We apologise to anyone who may have felt offended. Given these controversies, we have decided to stop the campaign immediately and to withdraw the video.”

The statement said that the clip featured “typical characters for the martial arts genre” including practitioners of the Chinese martial art kung fu, capoeira from Brazil, and kalaripyattu from India. 
  
Saninno said that the clip “started with demonstration of their skills and ended with all characters showing their mutual respect, concluding in a position of peace and harmony”. He said the genre had been chosen to “attract young people and to raise their curiosity on an important EU policy”.

While the video has been removed from the Commission’s YouTube channel, a copy can still be watched here.