Yes, France is part of the European Union's heart and soul. Just don't touch its Camembert cheese
A culinary issue erupted as the European Parliament prepares to vote on Wednesday on a proposal about packaging waste
BRUSSELS — The European Union has long known that the way to France's heart is through its stomach. So, don't touch the Camembert — never, ever.
On Wednesday, legislators at the European Parliament will vote to make sure it doesn't happen.
In one of the many legal proposals on streamlining and optimizing waste management throughout the 27-nation bloc, some French cheese producers sniffed out something and turned it into a culinary stink.
They claimed that the proposal would make it illegal for Camembert to be cradled into the wooden packaging for its final weeks of ripening and, eventually, sale. The round box is as essentially Camembert as its onctuous texture and pungent smell.
Suddenly, there was a frenzied flutter that something fundamentally French would fall foul of the Brussels bureaucrats — derisively known by many as Eurocrats — who are all too often blamed for flaws real and false.
“It is a matter of common sense. Don’t touch our Camemberts!” said Jean-Paul Garraud, a member of the European Parliament for France's far right Rassemblement National.
If forced into something easier to recycle like plastic, the perfect breathing of the cheese through wood might otherwise get sweaty and flabby. Wood, though, is very hard to recycle sustainably, so the EU plans to move it out of food packaging as much as possible.
Even Gen. Charles de Gaulle, French World War II hero and later president of the nation, knew all about the cheese issue. “How do you want to run a country that has 246 kinds of cheese,” he was quoted as complaining.
The center-right European People's Party, the biggest group in the European
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