Britannia Radio

9 June 2009

Huge Savings from Cost:Benefit Analysis of EU Laws - And Authority to Make Them If the Coalition government is serious about cutting unnecessary expenditure, the cost of compliance by the public sector to EU regulations and directives must be a prime target. In answer to a direct question, the European Commission told me at a meeting of the European Parliament’s Budget Control Committee in June 2006 that any cost:benefit analysis of EU legislation was a matter for each member state. During that meeting, the Estonian vice-president of the Commission, Siim Kallas, then holding the portfolio for administrative affairs and the fight against fraud, told me directly that the Commission could not calculate the costs of implementing legislation “because different member states do it in different ways”. He went on to clarify his position. He said that any cost:benefit analysis would never be possible at EU level because there was no common ground between countries about how such costs and benefits could be evaluated. Therefore, any such analysis was a separate matter for each member state. (The above note comes from the contemporaneous notes I kept of all the committee meetings I attended during my five years in the EP.) In the context of today’s desperate need to cut the public deficit, suddenly Kallas’ words become potentially of immense importance. Unfortunately, Kallas did not say that his reply was an invitation to each member state to start applying its own cost:benefit criteria. (My fault, I didn’t ask him.) But that was the clear implication, which now jumps into sharp relief. So what I am arguing is this : in today’s fiscal climate even the Commission could not object to a proper analysis of the costs and benefits of each piece of EU legislation by each member state, if necessary justified by the Kallas admission quoted above. His comments cannot be denied. All meetings are recorded. The EU might also find it politically impossible to object when a member state (the UK for example) concluded that, because the costs far exceeded any potential benefits, they had decided no longer to enforce such legislation on the grounds that it did not produce a measurable benefit to that country. If such action created an earthquake in Brussels , it would be entirely proper to remind the Commission that nowhere in the Treaties is there a direct and specific reference to the financial benefits of membership of the EU. It must follow, therefore, that such responsibility continues to rest with the individual member states. As my tutors’ used to say : “think on…”! Ashley Mote (formerly Independent MEP for South-East England , 2004-2009) Footnotes: It goes without saying that there would be equally substantial, if not greater, potential savings for the private sector if the British government applied cost:benefits analyses to all current EU legislation. It would be entirely reasonable, and politically and financially responsible to alert Brussels to the British government’s intention to apply such analysis to all future EU legislation before implementing it, as well as applying cost:benefit analysis retrospectively to existing legislation. During the year or so before my exchanges with Kallas in June 2006 I had put down a series of written questions to the Commission on much the same issue. There were five lengthy answers, three from DaliaGrybauskaite, the Lithuanian Commissioner responsible for the annual budget, one from Siim Kallas, and the last from the president of the Commission, Jose-Manuel Barroso. The best attempt at justification offered during these exchanges was that the EU’s own “impact assessments” were an adequate substitute. However, these lengthy Commission answers merely emphasised that the advising bureaucrats actually had no idea what a real cost:benefit analysis was. Instead, it became apparent that their impact assessments were not about value for money. They were much more about creating a level commercial playing field across the EU. They might talk about “diversity” but they practised “standardisation”. Nothing new there, then. I have kept all my 600+ written questions to the European Commission and all their often immensely long and obtuse answers. They are all on my computer, and I can make them available to the British government, or other interested parties, at any time.

To respond to, or comment on this Email, please email ashley.mote@btconnect.com Click www.ashleymote.co.uk to visit the site now.