A story in the UK-based Telegraph discusses a new report that exposes the European Union’s expensive propaganda campaign. With a budget of more than $7 billion, the self-promotion effort is hardly trivial:

The European Union is spending £3.8 billion a year on “propaganda” to win over its sceptical citizens… As well as publishing a plethora of pamphlets and employing an army of public relations staff, the EU has spent hundreds of millions of pounds on teaching aids, school trips and even cartoons. According to Lee Rotherham, the author of a new book which examines the EU’s spending on its image, such initiatives are an “outrageous and cynical attempt to brainwash the young”. …Let’s Explore Europe Together, an online teaching aid aimed at nine to 12-year-olds, describes the EU as a “really good plan that had never been tried before”. …In Italy, reports Mr Rotherham, children have been confronted by Camillo e l’Euro in Europa, a cartoon that champions the single currency. …Europe’s Best Successes, a 51-page pamphlet to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the EU, features lines such as “if you are lucky enough to be a citizen of the EU”, and “young people have really benefited from the development of a borderless Europe”. Mr Rotherham also details extensive spending on umbrellas, mouse mats, pencils and other items branded with the EU logo — part of a £2.4 billion budget for European Commission “projects”. He also reveals big grants to think-tanks and EU-funded trips to the European Parliament.

The U.S. government wastes money in similar ways, of course, including propaganda campaigns on behalf of the new Medicare prescription drug entitlement and the President’s no-bureaucrat-left-behind education scheme. But the Europeans seem to have more creativity when it comes to wasting taxpayer money. The UK-based Times reports that part of the European Union’s self-promotion budget was used to produce a sex video. In the understatement of the year, a bureaucrat admitted that the EU is not quite ready to compete with Paris Hilton:

The latest promotional video from Brussels shows European citizens engaged in enthusiastic congress, but it is not the sort of union the founding fathers had in mind. The film, available on the European commission’s space on YouTube, the video website, shows 18 couples having sex. The video opens with a man and woman ripping each other’s clothes off in the bedroom while bottles rattle on a shelf. In the interests of sexual equality, two of the couples are gay. …The video is part of a campaign by Margot Wallstrom, the communications commissioner, to boost interest in the workings of the EU. …The scenes were compiled by the commission’s press unit, using footage from Amélie and All About My Mother. Both films were supported by the EU. Wallstrom’s spokesman was initially unaware of the video’s presence on the site and denied it was in questionable taste. …he added: “We can’t really compete with Paris Hilton yet.” …Godfrey Bloom, a UK Independence party MEP, said: “I suppose this film is appropriate. The EU has been screwing Britain for the past 30 years.”