It has been suggested recently that there are 26,911 words of European Union regulation on the sale of cabbage. The claim is not true, but it has a long and interesting history dating back to the US in the 1940s.

"There is a simple explanation for this lack of enforcement. The European Commission helpfully informs me that the rules are quite ineffective for the simple reason that they do not exist. They are figments of the imagination."

Creating ‘Euromyths’ has become something of a cottage industry in the UK and the EU more broadly speaking. In fact, it’s so common that the European Commission has its own page dedicated to debunking these Euromyths indexing some 650 myths as of June 2016.