User:The C of E/European Parliament and Council Directive 95/2/EC

The Commission Directive 91/71/EEC was an EU Directive passed the European Commission regarding the level of sweeteners, flavourings and additives within food in states within the European Union and banning food that did not comply with it. The directive was repealed in 2011.

Regulations
The directive required that all foodstuffs containing colouring, additives or flavouring in the EU would have to be identified clearly on the packaging. The directive was an intent to harmonise sweeteners and prohibit additives within certain foods. The directive would come into force in 1994 by that time, all foods that did not conform would be banned from sale within the EU.

Prawn Cocktail crisps
There was one particular euromyth with regard to the directive, that it would have the result of banning prawn cocktail flavoured crisps in the United Kingdom. It came about following journalists at a press conference discussed that potentially the EU would ban certain additives within prawn cocktail crisps, and indeed EU Commissioner Martin Bangemann did propose to ban artificial sweeteners in crisps, thus the news story was published that the EU wanted to ban prawn cocktail crisps altogether. As a result, Bangemann was called "The sour kraut who wants to ban our crisps" in the British media and journalists followed him in Luxembourg offering him prawn cocktail crisps.

This was later proven to be as a result of a mistake on the part of the United Kingdom as there was no intent to ban them because when the EU were compiling a list of individual nations' food items, the United Kingdom's civil service forgot to include specifically flavoured crisps in the original list. When the food industry pointed out this omission, the mistake was rectified. The story was parodied in "The Thin Blue Line" sitcom where a French EU Commissioner stated "You [British] insist on eating prawn cocktail crisps, despite the fact we have told you not to".