Come Together

When it comes to institutions with a sexy image, the European Commission is hardly the Playboy mansion. And apart from Commission Vice President Günther Verheugen's alleged penchant for going au natural, there are also very few candidates in line to be the bloc's Hugh Hefner.

Both may be reasons why the EU is now using a bunch of beautiful young things engaging in steamy scenes to promote the EU's MEDIA fund which helps distribute successful European movies around the continent.

Sex montage promotes EU cinema

In one clip, which has, unsurprisingly, attracted the most attention, eighteen different couples have sex in a montage of love scenes culled from European cinema. The 44-second mini skin flick, shown on the bloc's EUtube Internet video channel, has had over 120,000 people logging on to get an eyeful of the writhing flesh and ecstatic moans and groans.

It is by far the most-watched video on the channel and has double the viewing figures of the next most popular: a short film about EU humanitarian aid which contains no sex whatsoever and only partial nudity.

However, the sexing-up of the EU has not gone down well and has been hard for some in the bloc to swallow, so to speak. One of the passionate scenes involving two men has drawn a flood of complaints from Poland, a country where recent anti-gay rhetoric has caused uncomfortable ripples around Europe.

No puritans in the EU apparently

But commission media spokesperson Martin Selmayr is unapologetic.

"The European Union is not the Bible belt," he said. "These clips come from award-winning films and they show the EU's rich cinematic heritage, which we can all be proud of."

"What can I say?" EU communication spokesperson Mikolaj Dowglielewicz added. "It doesn't always have to be about press releases. These clips explain better what the EU is doing."

This might explain why it takes so long for anything to get done in Brussels.