From France with love: UK police halt anti-Brexit ‘Operation Croissant’

FRANCE 24

Pro-remain campaigners from "Operation Croissant", a French pro-EU group, hand out postcards written by Parisians urging people in the UK to vote to remain in the EU, to commuters at Kings Cross Station in London on June 22, 2016, as they campaign to avoid a Brexit ahead of the June 23 EU referendum. AFP photo

British police swooped in to stop a French activist group that wanted to hand out hundreds of freshly baked croissants to London commuters in an act of European friendship ahead of Britain's vote on whether to remain in the EU.

Police intervened on the eve of Wednesday's caper, telling volunteers from the French capital it would be illegal to offer food in the run-up to an election because it could corrupt the result.

Britain's Electoral Commission said that the efforts of the group, #operationcroissant, violate guidelines banning the use of food to influence votes.

The group of about 15 volunteers had brought hundreds of croissants to London on the Eurostar train from Paris, said organiser Rosa Rankin-Gee. The 600 croissants from Paris were donated to homeless shelters.

Rankin-Gee, a writer based in Paris, says #operationcroissant was an effort to do something "stripped of the angry, politicised and divisive campaigning."


Read more on France 24.