Scrutiny Of EU Rules Is Failing, Says CBI

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 4-4-2005 | David Rennie

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Scrutiny of EU rules is failing, says CBI

By David Rennie in Brussels
(Filed: 04/04/2005)

Britain's early-warning system for scrutinising proposed European Union rules and regulations is badly flawed, failing to spot bad ideas early enough to head them off, according to the Confederation of British Industry.

About half of all legislation imposing burdens on British business originates in Brussels but both politicians and Whitehall bureaucrats fail to devote enough time to monitoring it, a CBI pamphlet claims.

Sir Digby Jones, the CBI's director general, pins equal blame on the "shocking ignorance" of many British voters about the EU, and on their MPs, who "seem to have neither the time nor the inclination to keep abreast of events across the Channel".

"Measures that will affect millions of people and cost millions of pounds pass through UK formalities, en route to being implemented into UK law, whilst barely causing a ripple," Sir Digby writes in the pamphlet, for the Foreign Policy Centre, a think-tank.

The CBI chief is joined in his analysis by Denis MacShane, the Europe minister and a staunch pro-European.

In theory, all EU legislation is scrutinised by special committees in the House of Commons and House of Lords, assisted by special standing committees.

But service on a European standing committee is seen as a specialist interest at best, and a dreary backwater at worst.

The scrutiny work, according to Sir Digby, often comes too late. By the time Westminster received EU papers outlining planned rules, the ideas may have gained unstoppable political momentum.