News

The European parliament is flying the Union Flag the wrong way up

Picture: Andrew Winning - WPA Pool/Getty Images
Picture: Andrew Winning - WPA Pool/Getty Images

Wednesday is the last day of EU reform talks in Brussels before a summit on Thursday which will announce whether or not a deal has been struck.

If David Cameron achieves an acceptable deal, he is expected to hold a referendum on Britain’s EU membership in June.

Some countries are reported to be resisting welfare curbs while France has opposed financial regulation changes, as part of the deal on the table currently.

On Tuesday, Daily Mail Brussels correspondent John Stevens noticed something about the flags outside the European Parliament.

He's not wrong.

Although if you turn the flag 180 degrees, it will remain the same, if you flip it upside-down or back-to-front, the red, diagonal St Patrick's cross representing Northern Ireland is accented incorrectly, so it falls on the opposite sides of the white portion of the St Andrew's cross.

Here's a comparison of the flag currently, compared to the way it should be oriented:

Pictures: John Stevens/Twitter/Wikipedia

It appears to have been this way for a while:

However, if you look at older pictures, the flag appears to be positioned in the correct way, like this one from a tweet dated 29 January 2014.

Picture: Graeme Trudgill/Twitter/Screengrab

So the mistake was made at some point in the last two years.

Top work everyone.

The Conversation (0)
x