EU regulation: another single market success
Friday 1 February 2013
 This was in the wake of the PIP breast implant scandal, when we were shouting from the rooftops about the failures of the EU regulatory system. And now the Daily Telegraph has "revealed" that the health of British patients was being potentially put at risk by European regulators "who were prepared to license potentially dangerous medical implants for sale in this country". These are ASR hip joint replacements, produced by DePuy Orthopaedics, a subsidiary of the American firm Johnson & Johnson. They are metal-to-metal hip implants, launched in 2003, which have now been shown to be faulty. Problems were reported as early as 2006, the product type was withdrawn in 2009 from Australian and US markets, but was still on sale in Europe until 2010. Approximately 40,000 patients have received an ASR replacement in Europe, 380 of them in France, but more than 10,000 in Britain, before they were finally withdrawn in August 2010, All of these hip replacements were authorised in conformity with EU legislation under the aegis of the Single Market. Market surveillance and vigilance rules were also specified by the EU. One should note that the fabulous Single Market which has brought us these great successes is the very same that Mr Cameron so enthusiastically supports, and tells us is so necessary. The rules are now undergoing revision, and have been going through the process for four years, withfurther revisions also proposed. But, the relevant directives have already been amended many times. There is no guarantee this time that the EU will get them right this time. Even then there will be little comfort for the thousands of people left in agony, despite every single one of the hip replacements used being fully certified with the EU's CE mark, a mark of quality that is about as reliable as anything else the EU has on offer. One wonders therefore, what it is going to take before people finally realise that the EU is not only driving us to ruin though weight of regulation, but also that the quality of its legislation is so poor that it fails completely to achieve its stated aims.
And when that day comes, what will we do then?
Richard North 01/02/2013 |
EU regulations: our masters speak
Friday 1 February 2013
 In fact, though, what you were looking at was a representative of our masters handing down their judgement on what things are to be or, more accurately, how they would wish them to be. The proximate issue here is neonicotinoid insecticides and their effect on bees, about which we wrote in November last. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. What matters here is not so much what, but how – and whom. The thing here is that this group of insecticides may or may not harm bees – the jury is out on this, but it does mean that there are calls for the products to be banned. If we were an independent nation, the decision would be made by our own Secretary of State for agriculture (Defra). But it is a long time since we enjoyed that status. Clues to our second-class status abound, one in a sequence being the press release issued by the 3,216th meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Brussels on 28 January. And yes, dear readers, there have been 3,216 meetings. Assuming they take one day each (and some go much longer), that is nearly ten whole years, as close a description of purgatory as can be imagined – a ten-year council meeting. Anyhow, the press release tells us that, at the request of the Dutch delegation, the Commission reported to the Council on the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) about the risk assessment of neonicotinoid insecticides with regard to bees. This request came in on 24 January, with the Netherlands asking the European Commission to take action on a "community level". As it happened, EFSA had reported on 16 January that it had identified a number of risks posed to bees by three neonicotinoid insecticides. Crucially, though, it reported that there was "a high level of uncertainty in the latest evaluations", which meant that EFSA's scientists "were unable to finalise risk assessments for some of the uses authorised in the EU". With nothing specific to go on, at the Council meeting, "many" member states nevertheless supported a suggestion from the Netherlands to initiate an action at community level "where high risks have been identified or could not be excluded in relation to certain aspects of the risk assessment for honey bees". This latter phrasing shrieks of "precautionary principle" and it will come as no surprise that some member states – our own included - considered that further scientific advice should be sought before taking any action. Taking no action, though, is not something for which the Commission is famed. It blandly informed the Council that it would "shortly" present proposals to apply "both the precautionary and the proportionality principles" to the issue. Sure enough, on Wednesday, the Commission gave early warning that it would present a discussion paper to Member State experts at a meeting of the standing committee on pesticides, aiming "to exchange views on the range of policy options available".
Said Tonio Borg, Commissioner for Health and Consumers, "we now need to carefully assess all the policy options that are available to us before bringing forward any legislative and harmonised proposals".
And so it was yesterday that we had M. Frédéric Vincent telling us that the Commission proposed that the Member States suspend for two years the use of these pesticides in seeds, granulates and sprays for crops which attract bees; sunflower, rape, maize and cotton. Vincent acknowledged that the issue had been on the table of the Council on Monday and it was true that some delegations expressed the view that it was necessary to pursue further analyses. Some big countries, he also said, "didn't express their view" but there was to be a "discussion". Member States would react and if there was a regulation, it would be before March. This has now been processed into news by the assembled hacks, a typical result emerging in EU business, with the headline: "EU urges two-year ban on 'disturbing' bee insecticides". Interestingly, the copy tells us that, "the EU urged national governments on Thursday to ban pesticides deemed dangerous to bees by scientific experts in a bid to prevent a disastrous collapse in colony numbers for an insect considered vital to the integrity of the human food chain". We also learn that "major EU states Germany, Britain and Spain", amongst others, indicated serious reservations about the plans, but the decisive meeting is set for 25 February. The chemicals then to be discussed are clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, produced by pharmaceutical giants Bayer, Syngenta and Cruiser OSR. Cut to Bayer CropScience, which believes that "the Commission's overly conservative interpretation of the precautionary principle is a missed opportunity to achieve a fair and proportional solution". It wants the Commission to refer back to "solid science" before making any proposals. The Company was a little more robust to the House of Commons environmental audit committee recently, having its Dr Julian Little telling MPs that the EU was in danger of "enshrining some sort of museum agriculture". "I personally absolutely support very strict regulation, but not to the point where we believe you are taking out major advances in chemistry and major advances in agriculture with no discernible improvement in bee health", he said. Defra rejected a ban late last year saying the scientific evidence wasn't clear, and have commissioned new studies that will look at the impacts of neonicotinoids on bumble bees in field conditions. Unfortunately, the results of those studies are not yet available. But what Defra thinks doesn't really matter. We are one voice in 27. The "experts" of the standing committee will do the deed, using the comitology process. Rumour has it that there are only three people in the world who have understood the process – one is dead, the second is in a mental asylum and the third exiled himself to a desert island. But whatever the committee decides, we will comply. That is how our government works. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 01/02/2013 |
EU referendum: corporate FUD
Thursday 31 January 2013
 Mostly, they are not even attempting to arguing the case for remaining in the EU (mostly, one assumes, because the case is so poor). Rather, they are attacking the very idea of having a referendum. The corporates – in their own minds – are supreme, and the thought of us little plebs being allowed a vote fills them with terror. Thus we have the parasites PwC spreading their anti-democratic poison in the corporate ragMoneyMarketing. Parasite-in-chief, PwC hedge fund leader Rob Mellor, is allowed to bleat: "A UK asset management industry outside of Europe may face obstacles to the continued management of assets for EU-based investors. This is a fundamental risk to the growth of the industry". In any free and fair discussion, you would not give this sort of jobsworth bleating more than a short blast of contempt, so lame and dismal is the argument. But the corporate might of PwC gives it open access to the ranks of the brain-dead.  Similarly, we get the vipers' nest of europhila – the London School of Economic - stir up its zombies in the LSE "Growth Commission" to warn us of the terrors to come if we threaten their gravy train. And sure enough, Sky TV, where corporate shall speak unto corporate, gives the LSE open access, and has professor John Van Reenen (good English name that) telling us: The idea of leaving the EU would be very, very damaging for the UK, so I personally think the uncertainty around having the referendum is actually going to retard growth and retard investment, so I don't think there is a strong case for having that referendum.What we are not told, however, is that Van Reenen has been an Executive Committee Member of the Fabian Society since 2006. One has to note, though, the strap line which conveys the same anti-democratic sentiments held by PwC: "The Government just talking about an EU referendum is damaging investment and productivity, influential economists warn", it says. There, naked in tooth and claw, is the corporate mind exposed. We shall stay in "Europe" and you shall not even think about leaving it, much less be allowed to discuss it. Any idea of democracy and public consent does not even enter their foetid, closeted minds. We the plebs must not dare to question our masters, nor be allowed to debate their folly and their greed. What last vestiges of democracy we ever had are draining away into the sand. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 31/01/2013 |
UK politics: falling apart
Thursday 31 January 2013
 One such was Tuesday's vote on constituency boundaries, and the reduction of the number of MPs from 650 to 600. The combined effect of that – in throwing out the proposed measures – was to make the election of Labour that much more certain, giving Miliband a built-in cushion of 20 seats before the first leaflet has been dropped through letter boxes. No one will disagree on this that the electoral system has now been skewed. With the shenanigans over postal votes – in a system that is also crying out for reform – the British electoral system is acquiring more than a few of the characteristics of a banana republic, ensuring that the next election will be anything but fair and free. It is hardly remarkable, therefore, that one of our better parliamentary correspondents, Quentin Letts, was outraged. "Watching our MPs on Tuesday", he writes today in The Daily Mail: I felt no longer as though I was in noble Westminster, "mother" to so many other democratic assemblies. I am sorry to say it felt more like being at a third world parliament, the plaything of one of those former Soviet states run by thick-necked ex-Communist thugs.In Britain, he goes on, "we have long flattered ourselves that we play by the rules. In the Commons on Tuesday, the rules were blatantly broken. In the 23 years, on and off, I have been reporting Parliament, I have not felt so disgusted by our political class". Letts is quite clearly outraged: "The behaviour of Mr Miliband, Mr Clegg and their MPs is worse than cash-for-questions or the expenses scandal", he adds "Those were fuelled by small-minded greed. This is the naked abuse of parliamentary principle. This, I am afraid, is anti-democratic theft". Sadly we could say the same thing of the insistence of our political class over our membership of the European Union, and yesterday's debate on "Europe" was in its own way just as offensive as the to event to which Letts takes such exception. There, you had MPs indulging themselves in a fatuous, ill-informed debate, not in the least reflecting the concerns of the people who elected them, rehearsing the same tired-old mantras. The debate was an insult to the very concept of democratic principles, without passion or fire. Lazy, disinterested MPs going through a sham ritual of debate without the first attempt to engage in the issues and get themselves properly informed. What Letts reports of the Tuesday vote, however, is the lack of outrage inside and outside the House to what in fact is blatant cheating. Similarly, we see a lack of response to the lacklustre performance of our MPs yesterday. But what was there to react to? It was a debate hardly worth reporting (and many newspapers haven't bothered). Unfortunately, the two issues are conjoined. Kate Hoey in the debate yesterday felt certain that Miliband would soon fall into line and before the general election commit to an EU referendum. But, if the Labour leader feels he can win the election on the basis of rigged constituency boundaries, he will most certainly be less inclined to give us a vote on the EU. If he cheats us, though, the pressure will not go away, and nor will the contempt. The British population may be slow to anger, and very slow to realise what is going on, but it is getting so bad that even Iain Dale has noticed something amiss. When the chattering classes fall out of love with politics, one suspects that the centre cannot hold for that much longer. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 31/01/2013 |
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