"Bankrupt"? No, say EU language police, it's "debt adjusted"

The EU is trying to erase ‘bankruptcy’ from the English language and replace it with the term ‘debt adjustment’.

A drive by Brussels to remove the ‘stigma’ of going bust would include a ban on the word, which has been in use in Britain since the mid-16th Century.

It raises the bizarre prospect of businessmen who run into financial trouble having to say: ‘Bad news. I’ve been declared debt adjusted.’

The idea is being considered as part of wider reforms to harmonise financial arrangements across the EU, including making it less troublesome to open bank accounts in different countries and easier to escape from debt and be ‘given a second chance’.

Italian Mr d’Alcala believes the word carries such a potent stigma  that individuals who have suffered it struggle to persuade banks to lend them money to fund new ventures. If the terminology is changed, he thinks, creditors are more likely to be forthcoming.

But Tory MP Brooks Newmark, a member of the Commons Treasury Committee, described the move as ‘another flawed, madcap scheme by Brussels’. He said last night: ‘This shows just how intellectually bankrupt – sorry, debt adjusted – the European Union has become.’

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