Get on your (Euro) bike!

The EU commission is to expand its fleet of "service bicycles" for its employees at its Brussels headquarters, bringing the number to 190. This is to enable them to travel between meetings at different EU offices or to get around town.

The scheme is all part of a wider plan to reduce pollution, which includes paying up to half its employees' public transport costs if they give up their free parking spots at their offices. The aim is to reduce the proportion of the commission's 22,000-member staff that drive to work to 35 percent by 2009 from the current 44 percent.

That, of course, is for the plebs but readers will be pleased to learn that the commissioners themselves are also being asked to make sacrifices. Their fleet of 25 luxury limousines will be replaced with "more environmentally friendly" luxury limousines so that they create less pollution.

I am sure their staff, struggling though the insane Brussels traffic on their Euro-bikes, will be mightily impressed as their masters sweep past them in the lap of luxury.

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