Barbican festival to woo EU sceptics

The Foreign Office is funding an international film festival to combat ignorance over European Union expansion.

The initiative has been prompted by a study which shows three out of four Britons cannot name a single country planning to join the EU in 18 months' time.

Worse still, the MORI survey – which polled 6,001 people– revealed one in three of us is unaware that the EU is even planning to expand.

The festival, opening this Thursday at the Barbican in London, will screen movies from the 13 nations applying for EU membership, among them Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey. The hope is that the British population, suitably enlightened by them, will embrace enlargement.

It may have the opposite effect. The films are largely art house affairs and include 89mm from Europe, which focuses on the lives of workers who change the wheels of railway carriages in Poland.

Alongside the film season, the Foreign Office is planning a touring photographic exhibition and a soccer tournament featuring retired British stars playing against teams from each of the 13 aspiring member states. Those taking part include Chris Waddle, Ian Wright, Bryan Robson, Ian Rush and John Barnes.

The prospect of EU enlargement is a thorny issue for the Government and the initiatives will be seen as the latest in an increasingly desperate series of measures aimed at converting Eurosceptics.

This latest survey highlights a growing sense of unease over enlargement: 67 per cent of respondents said it would have no benefit at all for the UK.