Regulation hurts

The Sunday Times reports that retrospective testing of chemicals under the EU's REACH directive will cause millions of animal deaths. "Current estimates of the number of animals to be affected range from the 16m predicted by the chemicals industry to 45m over 15 years". Mr Cameron has just decided that his MEPs will support the proposal. UKIP - to judge by its website - has not caught up with The Sunday Times yet.

There is also the small matter of what all this retrospective testing is going to cost.

Meanwhile Commissioner Verheugen has been speaking to his friend at the FT again.

He said new evaluation methodology of the administrative costs of EU legislation - including "gold plating" of laws by some member states - put the annual burden for business at up to €600bn ($756bn, £405bn) compared with the original estimate of €320bn. That figure does not include the compliance costs of the laws.

Open Europe reminds us that the Commission’s estimate of the benefit of the Single Market is around €160bn. "This suggests very strongly that the cost of increased regulation has outweighed the benefit of the Single Market programme – as Peter Mandelson admitted at the CBI conference in 2004."

Just what "administrative costs" includes I'm not quite sure (compliance for example apparently being separate from administration), but the Taxpayers' Alliance (TPA) has come up with the formulation that

1. Eurostat figures show that GDP for the 25 EU countries this year is just over €11 trillion, so the cost of EU regulation is around 5.5 per cent of EU GDP.

2. Eurostat figures show that there are 367 million people aged 18 or over in the 25 EU countries. This means that the cost of EU regulation is €1,634 per adult in the EU, or around £1,100 per adult.

As the TPA points out, there is no allowance here for the knock on effects of fewer jobs, high prices and lower wages.

People and businesses in Britain are being hammered from both sides. British taxes and regulations are increasing and getting more complicated, while EU regulations are another huge burden. It’s not surprising that companies which are able to are locating in lower tax EU countries or outside Europe altogether.

Again UKIP has not caught up with this. But it prefers to limit each of its statements to one point.

Meanwhile Mr Verheugen continues to concentrate on missing his pathetic target of simplifying (not abolishing) 54 laws, blaming uncontrollable officials - according to Coulisses de Bruxelles they are in other Directorates.

Thus euobserver has picked up a report from Handelsblatt that the new commission document on the EU's innovation strategy was drafted by the commission's secretariat-general without any involvement of Mr Verheugen, who is in charge of the policy area.

Commission sources told the daily that the responsible official in the secretariat-general did not like Mr Verheugen's political views on innovation and therefore drafted the paper himself without involving Mr Verheugen's cabinet.

Is this man in control or not? Clearly not.

euobserver has also picked up the FT report that the commission staff union FFPE said Mr Verheugen should either apologise for his remarks or resign.

"If the boss of an enterprise like Coca-Cola blamed a lack of sales on his workers he would either have to apologise immediately or resign," said Jean-Louis Blanc, the FFPE president.

Well, up to a point, Mr Blanc. What that boss should be doing is to bottom the problem, which would doubtless lead to some sackings. What would Mr Blanc have the Commissioner do?

This highly paid elite is of course too grand to concern itself with what its measures actually cost pensioners in Penzance or peasants in Poland. Maybe Mr Sykes will find some material here for his campaign.

Regulation hurts people as well as rabbits.