Linguistic purity in the EU

"Europe heroically defends itself against veggie burgers", The Economist 6/29/2019:

The european union gets a lot of flak. All right, it isn't literally blasted with anti-aircraft fire, but you know what we mean. One ongoing battle (ok, nobody died) involves the use of words. Earlier this year, the European Parliament's agriculture committee voted to prohibit the terms "burger", "sausage", "escalope" and "steak" to describe products that do not contain any meat. It was inspired by the European Court of Justice's decision in 2017 to ban the use of "milk", "butter" and "cream" for non-dairy products. Exceptions were made for "ice cream" and "almond milk", but "soya milk" went down the drain, lest consumers assume it had been extracted from the soya udder of a soya cow. The court has yet to rule on the milk of human kindness.

The article's ending:

Not all the union's governing structures are taking their linguistic responsibilities seriously enough. When earlier this year Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, spoke of "concrete measures" to extend the single market and a "level playing field", listeners might reasonably have looked forward to a multi-billion-euro infrastructure project to shift French and Italian mountaintops to the low-lying bits around Brussels.

The Treaty of Rome speaks of the need to respect member states' culture (no, nothing to do with yogurt) and bind them together (please put the string away). In view of those aspirations, Europe's leaders need to get on board with this reform. Not literally, obviously. It's not a ship. Never mind.