Associated Press
Friday May 7, 2004

The 65 cent stamp - 330,000 of which were issued on May 1 to commemorate the EU's expansion and for use to mail letters to all 25 member states - places Cyprus off the south-east coast of Greece, much closer to the location of Crete than Cyprus. The The 65 cent stamp - 330,000 of which were issued on May 1 to commemorate the EU's expansion and for use to mail letters to all 25 member states - places Cyprus off the south-east coast of Greece, much closer to the location of Crete than Cyprus. The horizontal sliver bears scant resemblance to the chubby, rhino-horned shape of Cyprus but comes uncannily close to the long and slim Crete, Greece's largest island.

Anna McHugh, spokeswoman for Ireland's mail service, An Post, insisted that the geographic accuracy of the stamp had to be compromised to get Cyprus, normally deep in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, into the picture at all.

"That really is meant to represent Cyprus, but we've had to take some cartographic licence. We simply didn't have room," Ms McHugh said.

"No country is quite right. Everything's squashed. No part of the thing is to scale."

The critics have whipped out their magnifying glasses to inspect the stamp, which comes in a standard size for Irish commemoratives: 40.64mm by 29.8mm (1.6 inches by 1.2 inches). It is clear to anyone familiar with the map of the Mediterranean that the country used to represent Cyprus is in fact Crete.

"It's quite a poor-looking stamp: dull in colour and blurry, perhaps because they knew they had to fudge the geography," said Peter Geoffroy, a salesman at a Dublin philatelic shop, Cathedral Stamps. "The stamp is simply too small for its ambitions."

Mr Geoffroy suggested that Cyprus' postal service should take revenge by producing its own EU map issue - and connect Ireland to its neighbouring island and old imperial master, Britain.

In Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom, symbol-sensitive Protestants also found fault with the stamp, which has erased the staunchly defended border between Irish south and British north.

"The stamp manages to get every single European border right on the continent, but ignores our own," said Steven King, an adviser to the Ulster Unionist Party in Belfast.

Mr King mailed a copy of the 1998 peace agreement for Northern Ireland - which emphasises Northern Ireland's right to remain British territory as long as most people want it that way - to An Post's headquarters in Dublin. He insisted his complaint was meant as a gentle ribbing and wasn't demanding a redesign.

"I'm sure it's just sloppiness. I'm not genuinely offended," he said. "We use British stamps up here anyway."