Column | Spice cake for volleyballs

I've decided: it's going to be a spice cake. I imagine it smelling wonderfully of gingerbread. It has cinnamon in it, like in my daily morning cereal. Plus clove powder and cocoa powder. And a tiny little bottle of rum flavoring. You don't treat yourself to anything else. Wonderful. If children are going to have the cake, the alcohol will of course be left out. I'm baking this delicious treat for a Christmas market in my local community. The gymnastics club organizes it every year and the spice cake is sure to be a hit. I hope so. Maybe it'll even sell like the much more famous hot cakes, which would of course make the producer proud, because baking isn't really his thing. But wait: While the batter is being spread on the baking tray, I receive a message of incredible significance. The chairman of the club, who is of course a volunteer, tells me to wait. They've come across an EU regulation that could potentially mean that I'll have to eat the cake all by myself in my own four walls. It's regulation no. 852/2004. Don't think, dear reader, that I've already destroyed a six-pack of the little rum bottles as a test. What comes next is actually a cruel reality. For every cake or pie, there has to be a list of ingredients including allergens. My kitchen has to be certified. I don't know exactly what that means. I'll probably have to show that I have proper tools, a cleaned oven and a working mousetrap. At the very least. I would then have to prove that the cold chain has been maintained, which I was planning to do anyway. The cooler bag is waiting to be used, the elements are in the freezer. Oh yes, I have to present certificates from the health department. When was the last time I had an infectious disease? Who is all this for? Well, for the people who, on behalf of Europe, try to help the bureaucracy get its way again and again. Volunteering and Bureaucracy They have their eyes everywhere, the inspectors. They swarm through all the countries of Europe during the Christmas season to make sure everything is in order, and above all to destroy my spice cake and the other treats that my neighbors have prepared for the Christmas bazaar. My club wanted to use the few euros left over from the Christmas market to buy a few new balls for the football, handball and volleyball players. And if there was anything left over, they would approve a small travel allowance for their away games. Now these expenses may have to be put on hold for the time being thanks to this ominous regulation, which has been in place since 2007. But it seems that only now have people really got a taste for it. The first hard-working and above all voluntary kitchen helpers have already started their work in Germany (Bordesholm Christmas market in Holstein). Holy bureaucracy. Of course I didn't sit idly by and discovered little loopholes. If the Christmas market remains a very small one, meaning more or less only twice the number of club members come to visit, then we could still start making cakes and tarts. Then it would basically just be club life. The legislator does not provide for an exception to meet the food law requirements by labelling the products because, as the bureaucratic heaven argues, any café around the corner could then opt out of EU law. No crumbs for the EU So the motto is: small but nice. The latter was clear anyway and not even the cheap bureaucracy and Brussels madness can take that away from us. The cakes and tarts and doughnuts are not just nice. They are of the finest quality. Now we just have to make sure that word doesn't get around and that we are only a so-called "small event". There are exceptions for that. Then we will just be able to buy a few fewer balls. All of this is the opposite of "reducing bureaucracy" and "making it easier for volunteers". Of course, it serves to "secure jobs" for the bloated apparatus in the Brussels EU behemoth. The oven is in any case set to 200 degrees top and bottom heat and in about 25 minutes it will spit out the spice cake, which already smells tempting. The EU officials who, in one of their many creative hours, brought Regulation No. 852/2004 into being would certainly enjoy the cake too. Perhaps I'll send a few crumbs to Brussels with best wishes from one of the many volunteer Christmas bakers. About the author: Sigi Heinrich The award-winning sports journalist (including winner of the German Television Prize, the Bavarian Sports Prize, nominated for the prestigious Grimme Prize), author, long-time sports editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung and commentator at Eurosport since 1989, devotes his weekly column to the entire diversity of sport and also likes to venture into unfamiliar territory. Sometimes with a wink, sometimes thoughtfully or even deliberately provocatively. There should be something for everyone.

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Column | Spice cake for volleyballs

If clubs organize Christmas markets in their voluntary structures these days to boost their finances, they must be vigilant. As our columnist Sigi Heinrich has noted, the bureaucracy in Brussels makes the organization difficult with a multitude of regulations and requirements.

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