Chris

It’s quite a revealing interview that demonstrates the philosophical gulf between the EU and the UK. For the EU, regulation is basically a good thing. Stuff should be regulated unless there’s a reason not to. For the UK the assumption is the opposite. We regulate only where necessary. I’ve done just enough consultancy work in the past to be treated to the spectacle of civil servants tying themselves in knots trying to avoid “extraneous business regulation”, even accidentally, in sloppily-worded guidance (as my task at the time was to write guidance this was of primary concern for me).

So no, it is not cosmically difficult to put stickers on things but Sefcovic seems not to understand the fundamental difference between a supermarket choosing to discount items as one of its basic freedoms, and a food manufacturer being compelled by regulation to separate out quantities of its product so that the right pallets get stickers on them, or not, as the case may be. Compelling business to act in certain ways by making regulations is not the first instinct of the British civil service (although its fair to say when they do accept the case for regulation, or rather are instructed by politicians to do it, they tend to be guilty of gold-plating).

This issue is not a political drama, and that the EU thinks it is, simply illustrates the deep-seated incompatibility of the processes of government that pertain in the UK and in the founding members of the EU (and principally, France), upon which the Commission (the EU’s civil service) is modelled.