There appears to be a common perception,
especially amongst those who hate the whole EU project with a passion, that as
a nation, Britain is now essentially ruled by an avalanche of unannounced and
unwelcome diktats and regulations, all of which originate from the un-elected
and unaccountable EU representatives based in Brussels and Strasbourg. But is
that true? Are our daily lives in the UK being dictated to by a deluge of
foreign rules, regulations and statutes drawn up by an army of faceless
European bureaucrats, who hold no democratic mandate in our country and whose
interference is unwarranted?
The truth of the matter, is that nobody
really knows. Although several half-hearted attempts have been made to try and
find out just how much the continental European Union influences our daily
lives, national laws, business communities and our native industries through
the imposition of and insistence upon a set of common European laws,
regulations, tariffs, etc. in reality it serves no mainstream British party's
political agenda to specifically highlight EU regulations from any that are UK
only, as this would only serve to identify and confirm the enormous level of
European involvement in what might be regarded by some as wholly sovereign
competencies, ie: British only issues. By way of example, in December 2002,
the then Labour Minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, said it would “entail
disproportionate cost to research and compile the number of legislative
measures enacted each year in the UK directly implementing EC legislation”.
In other words, the ruling Labour Party of the time either didn't know, or
didn't want the British people to know, the level of European legislative
involvement in the UK's affairs; and so their spokesman hid behind the excuse
of the likely costs involved in carrying out such research.
Because successive British governments,
Conservative, Labour and then Conservative-Lib Dem have often chosen to
amalgamate both national and European legislation, or hide their implementation
through the use of Statutory Instruments, this has simply served to complicate
the issue for those political representatives who have tried to publicly
highlight the impact that EU legislation can have, or actually does have, on
our everyday lives. Part of the problem for those individuals attempting to
isolate specifically European generated legal instruments is that not every
piece of legislation raised by the EU is relevant to each and every country;
and in some cases, particularly in the UK, governing parties are often minded
to simply incorporate new European legislation surreptitiously, adding them in
during an overhaul or as part of a complete rewriting of the broader rules and
regulations.
To further illustrate the point, on the BBC's
"Question Time" program broadcast on 28 May 2009, differing
percentage figures were offered by Labour's Caroline Flint, Conservative MEP
Daniel Hannan, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs Spokeswoman Jo Swinson, Green
Party leader Caroline Lucas and UKIP Leader Nigel Farage. Mr Farage referred
to a figure of 75%, which had been previously flagged up by the European
Parliament President, Hans Gert Pöttering, as the percentage of EU legislation
in which the European Parliament had a say, although Mr Farage mistook it for
an estimate of EU-based national legislation. The Conservative MEP Daniel
Hannan mentioned the 84% conclusion of a German Federal Government study, which
was later revised down, while Caroline Flint referred to the House of Commons
Library Note figure, which was thought to be in the low to mid teens; and
certainly nothing like the figures being quoted by Mr Farage and Mr Hannan.
Even in our own Upper Legislature, the House
of Lords, enlightenment is no closer on the subject of European legislation
within the UK, than it is in the House of Commons, as was proved by the
response by Lord Triesmann in that un-elected chamber. Responding to a question
from one of his fellow peers, Lord Triesman, replied: "Many EU regulations have a purely technical
or temporary effect. We estimate that around 50 per cent of UK legislation with
a significant economic impact has its origins in EU legislation." In other words, he didn't know for sure, but this was
his best informed guess!.
An OECD analysis of regulation in Europe yielded similar results. In
2002, they estimated that 40 per cent of all new UK regulations with a
significant impact on business were derived from Community legislation. And
despite reports that some 80 per cent of German regulation emanated from the
EU, the German Government later estimated that the actual proportion is more
likely to be about 50 per cent, around the same sort of level as in the UK,
which is probably what one would expect, given the similarities between the two
nation states.
According to one House of Commons Library
report on the subject, between 1958 and 2010 the range of areas in which
there has been a European Union role has inevitably increased, as successive
Treaty amendments have introduced new areas of European competency to the
Union, thereby giving rise to even more EU measures. The actual number of EU
laws was reported to have reached its peak of over 14,000 instruments in the
early 1980s and there was a lower peak in the mid-1990s. As a result of these
changes the British Government estimates that around 50% of all UK legislation,
with a significant economic impact, originated from EU legislation, presumably
the source for Lord Triesman's answer in the House of Lords.
Under Article 3 of the original European Community Treaty, the EU has a
principal role to play in the following areas of competencies{
a) Eliminating customs duties and quantitative restrictions on imports and
exports between Member States, including establishing a common customs tariff
and common commercial policy.
b) Abolishing obstacles to freedom of movement
for persons, services and capital.
c) Adopting common policies in agriculture and
transport.
d) Making sure competition in the common
market is not distorted.
e) Ensuring the economic policies of the
Member States can be coordinated and balance of payment issues remedied.
f) Approximating laws to ensure functioning of
the common market.
g) Creating the European Social Fund to
improve employment situation and raise standards of living.
h) Establishing the European Investment Bank
for the EC’s economic expansion and associating overseas countries and
territories to increase trade and promote development.
As one would expect, because the 28 countries
that make up the European Union are very different in terms of national
customs, cultures, economies, laws, etc. so the same pieces of European
legislation can have very different effects on the country in question. In a study in
2009 Yves Bertoncini used EUR-lex data for EU acts in force on 1 July
2008, to compare the EU’s legislative activity in different sectors, which
found that the Agricultural sector accounted for the largest proportion of EU
law, at 42.6%, while Internal Market legislation was just under 10%, although when
it included all legislation relating to the “four freedoms” (free movement of
goods, capital, services and persons), it subsequently rose to 20%; and
External Relations (technical, economic and financial) accounted for around 10%
of the EU total. Fisheries related legislation was reported to account for some
6% of the European Acts in force, perhaps illustrating best of all that not all
EU states are automatically affected by all EU regulations. It would seem to
follow therefore that the more developed a member state happens to be in terms
of its economy, industry, trade, society and laws then the more likely it is
that it will feel the effects of European Union involvement, as established
laws, rules and regulations are amended and adapted to suit the agreed
"standard" of the group.
The acquis
communautaire, the sum total of the European Community's Agreements, Acts,
Statutes, assorted Legislation and Memorandums of Understandings is often used
to illustrate the excessive and intrusive nature of the EU on the sovereignty
of the various member states. In one particular case, Open Europe, an
independent think tank calling for the reform of the European Union, was minded
to point out that between 1957 and 2005, the EU had passed a staggering 667,000
pages of new European laws, apparently overlooking the fairly obvious fact that
most pieces of legislation are often accompanied by lengthy preambles,
explaining the actual need and purpose of the specific piece of legislation, by
way of explanation and perhaps even justification in some cases. However, that
particular point aside, Open Europe also pointed out that an estimated 170,000
pages of these European laws still
related to active legislation, in force at the time, while the European
Union itself believed a figure of 80,000 pages to be more accurate. All that
being said though, the EU was forced to admit that the 80,000, or even the
170,000, whichever of the two figures was correct, it was still a staggering
increase on the mere 2500 pages that were said to have existed in 1973, some
thirty two years earlier. In commenting on the issue, Open Europe calculated
that if the European Union were to continue adding to the acquis commaunitaire
at the same rate as before, by 2020 the acquis document itself will comprise
some 351,000 pages of laws and agreements, depending on which European language
it is translated into.
As an addendum to those facts, a report by
Open Europe in 2010 found that since 1998, regulation introduced in the UK was
thought to have cost the British economy £176 billion. Of this, £124 billion, or 71
percent, was thought to have had its origin in the EU. In practical terms very
few businessmen ever have time to read even a fraction of the laws passed by
Brussels that impact upon their business; a job they leave to lawyers,
lobbyists and compliance teams instead, who, accordingly, put up administrative
costs. More recently an investigation earlier this year by Conservative MP
Priti Patel found that new laws, regulations and rules from Europe were thought to have cost over £5
billion (or the equivalent of £9,500 every minute) since the start of 2011/12.
In another Open Europe paper called “Out of
Control? Measuring a decade of EU regulation”, from February 2009, Mats
Persson, Stephen Booth and Sarah Gaskell looked at the amount of EU legislation
with an economic impact on business, the public sector or the “third sector”.
Their assessment concluded that: The average annual proportion of the absolute number
of regulations coming from the EU is 50.4 percent, with a range of 63.2 percent
in 1998, to 38.3 percent in 2002. In this measure, we have only included
regulations which, according to the corresponding IA, have any economic impact
on business, the public sector or the third sector. We have therefore avoided
the fallacy of comparing regulations of economic significance to those with a
minor or merely administrative function.
Of course for most people, the most obvious
way that the European Union impinges into their daily lives is through the news,
whether that's in print, through the television, radio or online, announcing
that British laws, rules or commonly accepted norms are suddenly incompatible
with the EU's own regulations, as in the case of prisoner votes, the Human
Rights Act, or whatever other subject happens to crop up. The truth of the
matter of course, is that the European Court of Human Rights is an entirely
separate legal entity to the European Union, although membership of the EU is
entirely dependent on acceptance of and adherence to the ECHR. However, Court
of Justice decisions cannot overturn national laws, although they may oblige
the State concerned to amend or withdraw a domestic law that is found to be
incompatible with EU law, and in such instances the European Union’s impact is
felt more strongly than in the routine adoption of other everyday EU laws.
From the EU's perspective, their lawmaking
ability also discourages other member states from enacting any new laws that
might conflict with a Court ruling. In the UK one of the most significant
examples of an acute impact was the Factortame case, which tested the
constitutional basis of parliamentary sovereignty. The case concerned the UK’s
obligation under EC law and the terms of Spain’s 1985 Act of Accession, to
allow Spanish fishermen to fish in UK waters within the prescribed EC quotas.
Following a ruling by the European Courts of Justice the House of Lords
‘disapplied’ the Merchant Shipping Act 1988 in so far as it conflicted
with the later EU obligations and based on the assumption that Parliament had
not deliberately contravened EU law.
In terms of a ballpark figure, in this
current Parliament alone, it is estimated that a total of 3,500 new regulations
and directives have been passed by the European Union that directly affect
British businesses; and the total word count of all 3,500 regulations is just
over 13 million words. It would take a UK business person, working an average
40 hours a week and reading at the average reading speed of 300 words per
minute, an estimated 92 days to read all the EU red-tape enacted since the
present government came to power.
Also, it has been estimated that it would
take a business person 55 minutes every Monday to catch up with all the EU laws
that have been introduced in the past week. Or they would have to spend eleven
minutes every evening catching up with the laws that have been introduced since
that day began. If they only looked at these new laws once a month they would
have to take a morning off to catch up (and spend 3 hours 42 minutes reading
solidly to complete them)
So as to the initial question, are we simply
of Europe, or governed by it? Well, it obviously depends on who you ask,
especially if you hold the view that successive governments have clearly
attempted to obscure any sort of straightforward answer to that particular
question. If it was purely based on numbers of new regulations raised, pages
produced or individual words written, then one could probably come to the
conclusion that not only are we governed by Europe, but have also been swamped
by its manifestly out-of-control bureaucracy. From headline grabbing bananas,
plant seeds, mobile phones, economy airfares, to more important issues, like
working hours and pay, the European Union has somehow managed to bog itself
down in a nightmare pursuit of European standardisation, often against the
wishes of the culturally different indigenous populations. Clearly forgetting
the lesson that one size doesn't necessarily fit all, the European's Union's
almost instinctive habit of legislating to achieve conformity, or uniformity,
can only ever be a recipe for disaster, something that the members of the
European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Council all seem
quite happy to ignore at their peril.
Speaking for myself; and as has previously
been noted on this blog, I do now; and will always consider myself to be
British, not so much English, not French, not German, not Spanish; and
certainly not European. No matter how much the EU tinkers, regulates, legislates,
agitates, or interferes in our Parliament, our courts, our businesses, our
schools, or any other sector of our country, ultimately we will remain British,
English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish; and no amount of European inspired law,
whether its 50% or more, will ever change that.
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