Tuesday, 4th November 2008
EU bureaucracy blizzard as legislation tops 170,000 pages
The acquis communautaire, or book of rules which governs Europe's 500 million citizens, is now a staggering 170,000 pages long! Of these 170,000 pages, over 100,000 have been produced during the past ten years and this rapid expansion of red tape shows no signs of abating.
Commenting on this bureaucracy blizzard, Struan Stevenson MEP said:
“3,010 EU ‘legislative instruments’ were enacted into British law in 2007 – almost three times the amount introduced in 1998 – and the EU has added an average of 942 new laws to the statute book each year since 1998.
“The horror of all this red tape and bureaucratic meddling is that huge costs are added to business and industry, rendering Scottish, UK and EU businesses uncompetitive in the global marketplace and this has caused a haemorrhage of jobs out of the EU.
“It is estimated that the total burden of regulation costs the British economy £150 billion a year. At a time of looming economic recession and meltdown in the financial markets, this is nothing short of madness. My message to the Commission is never mind the EU Constitution...just cut the red tape!"
