Why getting rid of EU retained law is a massive red herring I have a relatively long history with pro-Europeanism, one that has taken me to some strange places. During the parliament of 2010-2015, I organised a lot of events on the European question, often bringing together both sides of what would formally become Remain and Leave as the referendum of 2016 dawned. I recall thinking back then that the Leave side were well-organised and the Remainers were not particularly. The latter group was a little lackadaisical at the time, assuming that the country would never, could never do anything as stupid as voting to Leave the EU.
Okay, I haven't read the whole of the details of your article, but what it suggests to me is that your, now expert, view on what "EU red tape" really means would suggest that James O'Brien's debating tactic on LBC of inviting Brexit supporters to tell him which piece of bad EU regulation they were most looking forward to scrapping was bang on the money for exposing how little there was behind this point in the Brexit argument.
"Perhaps you’ve heard of the term “gold plating”? This is what often happened to the UK translations of EU Directives - instead of taking the lightest possible approach the Directive required to be fulfilled, the UK tended to take the harshest, most punitive interpretation of the Directives. Why? That’s a whole other article,"
I remember that back in 1994, when Austria voted in a referendum on whether to join the EU or not, the topic of EU legislation was also a particularly hot one.
There were concerns that many of these directives might have been designed for the needs and/or benefits of much larger nations, which would either make them hard to implement or burdensome to Austrian people and businesses.
Additionally there were concerns that in areas in which Austria had higher standards, e.g. environmental protection, the situation would deteriorate.
While none of those arguments were completely unfounded, they turned out to have much less impact as originally feared.
For example having higher environmental standards meant that farmers had more cost than EU counterparts but it turned out that Austrians put really a lot of value into high quality when it comes to what they eat.
A couple of years later Austrian farmers were spearheading the move to organic food production, as the gap between national standards for traditional farming and organic farming was much more narrow then elsewhere.
Alongside the realisation of a much softer impact of EU regulation came the understanding much more easier it is for the EU to improve standards than for any individual country, especially one as small als Austria.
If the EU mandates a common plug/socket for chargers, whether that is for electronics or electric vehicles, then manufacturers will usually not try to fight against that (as that would be futile) but among themselves on which one to agree on.
I'll have to check if I can find a resource similar to this article that has the most harmful directive from an Austrian perspective.
It probably helps that our parliament is very unlikely to "gold plate" anything unless there is major buy-in from the opposition parties as well.
Because furthering your agenda on the back of an EU directive only works if it doesn't came back to haunt you at the next election.
I guess in the UK's "two party" system both sides have used the trick so often that neither can't really use it against the other.
Okay, I haven't read the whole of the details of your article, but what it suggests to me is that your, now expert, view on what "EU red tape" really means would suggest that James O'Brien's debating tactic on LBC of inviting Brexit supporters to tell him which piece of bad EU regulation they were most looking forward to scrapping was bang on the money for exposing how little there was behind this point in the Brexit argument.
"Perhaps you’ve heard of the term “gold plating”? This is what often happened to the UK translations of EU Directives - instead of taking the lightest possible approach the Directive required to be fulfilled, the UK tended to take the harshest, most punitive interpretation of the Directives. Why? That’s a whole other article,"
I look forward to reading it asap.
I remember that back in 1994, when Austria voted in a referendum on whether to join the EU or not, the topic of EU legislation was also a particularly hot one.
There were concerns that many of these directives might have been designed for the needs and/or benefits of much larger nations, which would either make them hard to implement or burdensome to Austrian people and businesses.
Additionally there were concerns that in areas in which Austria had higher standards, e.g. environmental protection, the situation would deteriorate.
While none of those arguments were completely unfounded, they turned out to have much less impact as originally feared.
For example having higher environmental standards meant that farmers had more cost than EU counterparts but it turned out that Austrians put really a lot of value into high quality when it comes to what they eat.
A couple of years later Austrian farmers were spearheading the move to organic food production, as the gap between national standards for traditional farming and organic farming was much more narrow then elsewhere.
Alongside the realisation of a much softer impact of EU regulation came the understanding much more easier it is for the EU to improve standards than for any individual country, especially one as small als Austria.
If the EU mandates a common plug/socket for chargers, whether that is for electronics or electric vehicles, then manufacturers will usually not try to fight against that (as that would be futile) but among themselves on which one to agree on.
I'll have to check if I can find a resource similar to this article that has the most harmful directive from an Austrian perspective.
It probably helps that our parliament is very unlikely to "gold plate" anything unless there is major buy-in from the opposition parties as well.
Because furthering your agenda on the back of an EU directive only works if it doesn't came back to haunt you at the next election.
I guess in the UK's "two party" system both sides have used the trick so often that neither can't really use it against the other.