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Letter to the Editor
Nottingham Evening Post - Monday 15th May 2006 Dear Sir, How wrong can one man be? And how often? John Gretton (letters, 15/5) insists I am mistaken to claim that up to 80% of our new laws come from Brussels. He says it's 9%. Well John, if you don't like my estimate, how about Gordon Brown's? "Approximately half of all new regulations that impact upon business in the UK originate in the EU". That's a whole lot more than 9%! And I correctly quoted a study in the German Bundestag between 1998 and 2004 showing that 19,000 laws out of 23,167, or 82%, came from Brussels. The Dutch Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm says "Over 50% of the administrative burden on business in the Netherlands has a direct European origin". Of course maybe all these people are wrong, and Mr. Gretton is right. But I don't think so. Gretton's 9% comes from a 1998 study by (then) Europe Minister Denis MacShane, showing that 9% of all statutory instruments implemented in the UK were based on EU regulation. But statutory instruments are a very poor measure of the legislative burden, and include purely local measures like road closures. Research by the well-respected think-tank Open Europe shows that 77% of the cost of regulation on UK business has been driven by EU legislation. Brussels is responsible for four of the five costliest regulations in Britain. The total cost of these EU rules to our economy has been an astonishing £30 billion since 1998. This research is available at http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/regs.pdf The plain fact is that the EU is in long-term relative economic decline, and our membership of it is costing us a fortune. It is damaging our prosperity, our jobs, and our economic future. The sooner we step back from the EU, and resume our natural role as a great global trading nation, the better. Roger Helmer Conservative MEP for Nottinghamshire |