Britannia Radio

The following letter has gone to the president of the European Commission from Ashley Mote MEP

Dear Mr President

Thank you for your letter of 31 October about the cost of regulation enforcement.  Whilst I appreciate your attempt to deal with the fundamental problem I raised, your reply raises more questions than it answers.

On the specific example I gave you:

1.  What business is it of the European Commission to tell a roofer (or any other entrepreneur) what he can and cannot do in the best interests of his business?  If an employee falls off a ladder and breaks his leg there are adequate legal processes already in place for the employee to sue for negligence.

2.  What happened to our right to make mistakes, and pay the consequences?  Who gave you the right to assume you know best?

3.  What happened to the EC's obsession with creating a level playing field and the elimination of unfair competition?  As tens of thousands of visitors to France know from experience, the French do not force roofers or decorators or builders to use scaffolding.  The simply ignore the regulation.  In most French villages, a house under repair might, at most, have a traffic cone at the bottom of ladders sticking out into the street.  Unfair competition does not exist in reality in such circumstances, but the application of double standards undoubtedly does.

On the wider issues:

4.  Why does the Commission not enforce fines on the French for non-compliance, and then - when it does - not enforce collection?  (My written questions E-3932/06, E-0369/08 and annexs refer)

5.    Why has the new Health Commissioner (of all people) recently used EU competition law (written answer to E-4989/08EN) to defend a decision to tag sheep on upland British farms at a cost that will put many in breach of the law and threaten their commercial survival?  Mrs Vassiliou is using competition law (not her brief) to initiate the destruction of a substantial farming community and a way of life which has protected and preserved these uplands for centuries as nothing else could.  The only real competition these upland sheep farmers face, and have always faced, is from extremely harsh weather conditions.  As for health - who is she kidding?

6.  Why, without saying so, has the same Health Commissioner used the risk to Danes from untreated drinking water as a "reason" for a pesticide ban on market gardeners and horticulturalists in the UK where no such risk exists because British drinking water is purified first?  And where was the Danish Agriculture Commissioner in all this?  Hiding from a conflict of interests, no doubt. 

7.  We now hear the Fisheries Commissioner is about to increase the fines for illegal fishing, whilst STILL doing nothing (after years of dithering) to stop the disgraceful and utterly indefensible waste of good edible fish because nobody told the fish about EU quotas.  And how does he defend his inertia to the Environment Commissioner, who ought to up in arms about the harm being done to the seabed?

Leaving the fisheries problem aside, and as I have told you before, the idea of creating a level playing field in an essentially competitive environment is lunacy.  It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what markets are and how they work. â?~Diversityâ?T may be the EU claim but rigid standardisation is the reality.  It puts people out of work, it closes viable businesses down.  And for those that survive this onslaught of regulation, pointless standardisation produces absurd and unacceptable hazards to legitimate businesses.  Those mentioned above are merely the tip of a huge iceberg.  There are many thousands of others.    

You may be seeking a second term.  But it should be presiding over a better organised lunatic asylum than this one.

Ashley Mote

cc:  Health Commissioner
Competition Commissioner
Budget Commissioner
Agriculture Commissioner
Fisheries Commissioner
Environment Commissioner