Chris

Of course we won’t agree to a level playing field, and of course the EU is concerned about that.

So many EU regulations are finely wrought compromises that try to account for various sectoral interests in different member states. The rules are pitched as “harmonisation” but all too often what that really means is that a powerful interest in one country is being undercut by a smaller, nimbler business somewhere else. Lo and behold, along comes the EU with regulations that “harmonise” the market in the direction of standards big businesses have the resources to meet, but erode the competitiveness of smaller ones.

GDPR is a classic recent case in point. The administrative burden even on small charities is absurd. What it’s doing to small businesses that don’t have their own compliance departments and in-house lawyers I can only guess. The attempt to ban olive oil at table in non-factory sealed bottles is another, that threatened to put a host of small producers out of business. Thankfully the EU did a rare u-turn in that instance, but the loud squeals from the trade association for producers who sell their olive oil only in factory-sealed bottles tells you all you need to know about how far this really had anything to do with consumer protection.