European Public Holiday to be announced before the end of the year

New dates coming soon?

Though the plans have been kept under the veil of secrecy within the European Commission, a careless leak by a Commission official at Kitty O’Shea’s (the official taking a leak with a colleague whilst a BJ reporter was in the premises) has allowed the BJ to yet again uncover an exclusive piece of information: the European Commission is planning the launch of a “European Public Holiday” that will have to be adopted by each Member State.

As we dug further, our reporters discovered that the Communications DG supporting Commissioner Reding is feverishly working at setting in place the public holiday in question, which will actually last for more than a day. Unofficial sources told us that every Member State is attributed an hour of holidays, the sum meaning that under the current EU make up, the European Public Holiday will last 27 hours. As our source jokingly explained: “It’s actually really clever: first, every citizen is gonna love Europe for giving an additional public holiday; secondly, it kind of makes the accession of new countries appealing, as an EU with 48 Member States would mean 2 full days of holidays”. Commissioner Reding is considering making her announcement on this matter on 25 December, making her the Santa Claus of Europe.

The three sore points however that still need to be resolved are: (1) the name given to the new public holiday, some Commissioners have expressed their intention to veto Reding’s proposal to call it “Viviane Day”, (2) the request by Germany to withdraw the hour of any Member State that would not respect the Stability Pact and (3) the exact date that would be used as a starting point for the 27-hour slot.