Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
In an oblique way, he’s approving of one of the major faults of the EU - namely that rules imposed on all members are usually written to serve the interests of only one or two of them. The single market isn’t a free market, it is a highly regulated one, cobbled together over many years whenever one interest group or another shouted loudly enough. Manufacturers of pre-packaged, sealed bottles of olive oil being one recent, notable example.
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But very often, what come around goes around, especially at the committee stage. Way, way back in the day, I went on a week 'business skills' course run by the UK scientific research councils (MRC who funded me, BBRSC, PPARC,
etc.) One of the activities we did was a mini COREPER session, COREPER being the EU Commissions point where member states negotiators get together to bash out new initiatives, laws and so on. The chap running this session used to be part of the UK team at COREPER.
We had to negotiate treaties on renewable energy policy, levels on an industrial pollutant and tariffs on soft fruit. I was in the 'Sweden' team and we couldn't give a monkeys about soft fruit or the pollutant as we didn't make either but was very strong on renewables. We formed an alliance where we backed Spain and Italy on their soft fruit policy in return for their support on our renewables policy. We went 'soft' on the pollutant issue to get Frances support. We were given guidelines on our 'public' position and a secret limit to how far we could vary from this position.
It was a tough three hours but it bought it home how much horse trading you can do when working on multiple issues. Concessions on olive oil bottles will be paid back somewhere else. No one gives away anything for nothing at COREPER!