Gunter Verheugen blames everyone else

As we reported earlier this month, out of 54 regulatory simplification projects that the EU Commission had planned for 2006, only 5 have been finalised so far. Now Gunter Verheugen has blamed senior EU officials - and called for "a red tape reduction quota to be fixed to member states".

Thus he is proposing to tie up countries' red tape reviews in ... more red tape. He says the commission has withdrawn 67 "unnecessary proposed laws" from the EU's legislative machine, but the reduction of existing regulation has met heavy resistance from the commission's own staff as well as the European Parliament and member states.

He suggested that "an administrative reduction of around 25% would release €75 billion into the European economy," though quite why he thinks a figure of 25% would be remotely achievable across the EU we are not sure.

EUobserver reports

He added that member states are not always happy to support the commission when it proposes to chop regulation.

His own plan to scrap 80 EU laws regulating the size of the packaging of food products was resisted by the UK and Germany – normally de-regulation champions - as well as by MEPs who reacted to the plan by issuing a list of products where packaging sizes still need regulation.

We continue to argue that this is tinkering at the edges - and ineffective tinkering at that. He let the RoHS Directive go through, even though it is based on flawed science. It will cost the UK alone at least £1.3bn annually - and that's the DTI's estimate.