Britannia Radio

3 July 2010   Analyse Costs:Benefits of All EU Legislation - Mark 2   Now A Letter to Regional Newspaper Group (PS : Chapter 4 of memoirs now on-line)   Following my recent blog on the benefits of a full cost:benefit analysis of all existing and future EU so-called 'laws', copies of my proposals have gone to all known sympathisers in the Houses of Commons and Lords.   No national newspaper has printed a word on the idea, despite being briefed.  No surprises there.   So the following letter has been sent to my local newspaper group.  We shall see...   Your correspondent John Holt (25 June) rightly complained about the burden of 2756 new pieces of EU legislation forced on the UK in the last year.  What he did not mention was the cost of compliance, both by the British taxpayer and by private enterprise, all of which is on top of our annual ‘club subscription’ to Brussels of some £2.3 every hour of every day and night.   If the new Coalition government was serious about making deep cuts in public spending, where better to start than by looking closely at our cost of membership of the EU?   Even if they were unable to reach the conclusion millions of us reached long ago that European countries should be our friends and neighbours, but cannot be our masters, the Coalition should at least re-examine the costs of compliance.   In answer to a direct question, the European Commission told me at an open 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, (no, I did not make it up) confirmed that the Commission could not calculate the costs of implementing legislation “because different member states do it in different ways”.   The EU undertook ‘impact assessments’, but those were about creating a level commercial playing field.  (The bureaucrats might talk about ‘diversity’ but they practised standardisation.)      Kallas 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.   In the context of today’s desperate need to cut the public deficit, suddenly Kallas’ words become potentially of immense importance.  How could the Commission now object to a proper analysis of the costs and benefits of each piece of EU legislation by each member state?   Furthermore, 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 analyses retrospectively to all existing legislation.   The EU might 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.   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.  Therefore, that responsibility must rest with the each member state.     As my tutors’ used to say  : “think on…”!   Ashley Mote (formerly Independent MEP for South-East England, 2004-2009)     Footnote : Chapter 4 of A Mote in Brussels’ Eye is now on-line.  Entitled Serious Battles Develop, it focuses on clashes in public committee meetings with the head of the EU’s supposedly fraud-busting agency, OLAF, headed by a discredited former German judge, and early vigorous exchanges over the proposed Constitutional Treaty.         To respond to, or comment on this Email, please email ashley.mote@btconnect.com Click www.ashleymote.co.uk to visit the site now.