No holidays on Christmas, Easter in EU school diaries

LONDON - The European Union (EU) has been asked for a formal apology for sending millions of diaries to school, which list the dates of Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish and Chinese festivals but do not mention of Christian holidays.

There is no record for Christmas, Easter or Lent - despite bureaucrats carefully listing the EU’s self-styled “Europe Day” May 9, the Daily Mail reported. The EU was forced to apologise as religious groups expressed their disbelief.

Three million 2011 notebooks were printed at a cost of 4.4 million pound. Around 350,000 of them have been shipped to schools in Britain alone.

John Dalli, EU’s consumer commissioner said: “We regret this” and apologised.

While the apology is general, there has been a specific, grovelling apology sent to the French government and to the French Catholic Bishop Conferences which had complained directly to Brussels.

European Catholic Commission spokeswoman Johanna Touzel described the mistakes “just incredible”.

“Christmas and Easter are important feasts for hundreds of millions of Christians and Europeans. If the Commission does not mark Christmas as a feast in its diaries then it should be working as normal on Dec 25,” she added.

EU officials have described the diaries as “a rather gross error” but were unable to explain the reason behind it.

The diaries also contain information for youngsters such as mobile phone costs, the dangers of the internet and climate change.

German conservative delegate Martin Kastler blamed “aggressive atheism in the apparatus of the European Union-Commission” and called it “unbearable”.

“It is impudent to say that it was merely a mistake, however big. I demand that the responsible officials be called to account immediately,” he was quoted as saying.

“I expect a personal apology from the Commission president because I believe this was intentionally published in this way.”