HEARD the one about the ban on bendy bananas? The European Commission wishes you hadn’t. Frustrated by the “twisted facts” and “lies” about Europe, the European Commission has begun a counter-offensive against the British media.

As part of its campaign to improve flagging confidence in the European Union, it has set up a website giving detailed rebuttal of stories that it complains leaves readers with a “picture of the EU as a bunch of mad “eurocrats”.

The stories include alleged EU plans to ban advertising slogans such as “Guinness is good for you”, the one about the EU wanting to reduce lottery prizes to a maximum of £60,000 and alleged EU plans to ban corgis and 100 other breeds of dog.

The website is aimed at all European media, but nearly 90 per cent of the stories come from Britain. Most British national papers are criticised — with The Sun and the Daily Mail in the lead — as well as the BBC website. Six articles from The Times are included.

“The British press is quite prepared to report fantasy, and they have a habit of deliberately distorting stuff. But many of them are very funny, and we have a laugh ourselves. We do have a sense of humour,” a Commission official said.

The Commission hopes that targeting the British press — the most influential in Europe — will stop stories from spreading. “Mostly, they start in the British press and spread. The story about pigs needing toys started in Britain and went to Germany and the Czech Republic,” the official said.

The website, called “Get Your Facts Straight”, had been intended for journalists, but Margot Wallstrom, the new Communications Commissioner, whose job is to improve the EU’s image, wants to promote the website to the public. With the European constitution being put to a referendum in 11 member states, the Commission has made a priority of improving public confidence in the EU.

Ms Wallstrom’s spokesman said: “It is useful to remind people of the truth. Our purpose is to ensure there is an informed debate, and this is part of that.”

The Commission is supported by the British Government, which has long complained of Euroscepticism in the British press. The Government’s spokesman in Brussels said: “It’s a good thing if stories are rebutted, but it would be better if journalists reported them right in the first place.”

However, Chris Heaton- Harris, a Conservative member of the European Parliament, said that most of the stories were largely true: “There is no smoke without fire in these stories. Eurosceptics don’t have to make up scare stories, because the Commission does a good job themselves. It’s just another plank in their propaganda battle to win the referendum on the constitution.”

Some of the stories rebutted by the EU did not actually originate with the Commission, but with other European bodies. For example, the story about banning Corgis, reported in the Daily Mail, was based on the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals, which is part of an organisation called the Council of Europe, of which Britain is a member, but which has nothing to do with the European Union.

Many of the other stories are based on supposedly over- zealous interpretation by local authorities or trade associations. The story that pigs would require toys — reported in The Times — was based on an EU directive that pigs should have an “enriched” environment, which the industry took to mean toy provision, which the Government did not dispute. The ban on butchers giving cast-off bones to dogs was based on an EU regulation on the disposal of animal by- products as a way of combating BSE. The Commission insists that “it does not stop a butcher supplying bones to individual dog-owners for pets’ consumption, provided the bone has not already been thrown away”. Ceredigion County Council took the edict seriously and wrote to butchers ordering them not to give bones to pets.

Sometimes issues are represented as compulsory, whereas they are voluntary. The Commission produced a document called Made in the EU Origin Marking, which considered having a “Made in the EU” label, but it insists that it did not contain plans to actually ban the label “Made in Britain”.

Eurosceptics argue that the EU often introduces voluntary plans and then makes them compulsory.

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