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Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Tut tut MacShane

Mark Harper's excellent idea for a Bill has been voted down. As his press release says, somehow, amid all the turmoil on the financial markets , the Government still found time to whip its MPs to oppose the bill to increase the transparency of EU legislation. In a rare break with usual practice, even Government Ministers were told to oppose the Bill.

It really is amazing that our Government is so keen to keep people in the dark about the facts. What are they hiding? But what is arguably more unbelievable, is the speech given by former Europe Minister Denis MacShane in response to the Bill in Parliament today.

Not only did he begin his speech with his usual drivel that anyone who dares suggest any kind of reform of the EU at all is part of the "Better off Out" campaign, poor confused Denis then went on to give a sound argument in favour of the bill - before voting against it.

He launched a long-winded explanation of the various different existing estimates that are out there about the proportion of national legislation that comes from the EU - (atttacking all but his own which suggests 10%) He said there were all sorts of inaccuracies and "lies" being peddled and gave a good account of the endless row over what the figure actually is.

Which is precisely what this Bill sought to resolve. To put an end once and for all to this long and boring row about how much national legislation actually originates in the EU.

It is extraordinary that somebody who accepts that there is so much confusion over the amount of legislation coming from the EU should then oppose efforts to increase transparency.

But that's not all. MacShane also made a song and dance about the 80-odd percent figure which was cited in Mark Harper's speech. He said it was a "lie", from "some anonymous German" and that nobody had ever been able to source it.

He even said the BBC (Mark Mardell in particular) have never been able to find it.

Well it took us about 10 minutes:

Former President Roman Herzog said it here (translation of original article in Welt Am Sonntag, February 14 2007)

The information he was basing his figure on is on page 15 here: (April 29, 2005, in the German Parliamentary Journal 15/5434 of May 6, 2005)

This is State Secretary Parliamentary Undersecretary Alfred Hartenbach Hartenbach saying: From 1998 until 2004 167 EU regulations and 750 directives have been passed. During the same period the German Parliament has in total 1.195 laws (as well as 3055 Rechtsverordnungen) passed.
(“Rechtsverordnungen” are a wide category of binding acts by Parliament, government, administration)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I can't make 84% out of those figures, much as I'd like to because its a figure I often quote. I need to get it right. How do you get 84% from those figures?

Peter Gardner

Open Europe blog team said...

Hi,

We're not sure why Roman Herzog said 84% because as you say the figures he cites actually suggest 76% at the most.

We are currently waiting for contacts in Germany to come back to us on where the difference in figures comes from.

Either way, MacShane's claim that there is no source for the figures ("75 or 80%") was clearly rubbish designed to undermine those people who are making an effort to clear this controversy up.

Anonymous said...

One could suppose that a directive is approximately equivalent to a law and that a regulation is approximately equivalent to a Rechs thingy. On the former basis I make that about 60%.

Open Europe blog team said...

This is how they calculated the figure, according to our German source:

750 (directives) + 18.187 (regulations) = 18.917 EU legislative acts

1.195 (Gesetze) + 3.055 (Verordnungen) – 750 (directives) = 3.500 German legislative acts

18937/22437 = 84.4%

To avoid double counting, the 750 directives were subtracted from the total number of German legislative acts, since directives have to be implemented via national legislation.

Anonymous said...

OK, I see that now.

Difficult to condense into a soundbite, though!

Peter Gardner

Anonymous said...

I have e-mailed Denis MacShane a copy of the actual written answer from the German Ministry of Justice, with the numbers. He can no longer claim it's the ravings of an obscure German sceptic whose name he forgets!

Roger Helmer

Anonymous said...

However reasoned the argument against our continued membership of the EU none of the Eurofiles in Whitehall will acknowledge it because they have all accepted the 30 pieces of silver from Brussels. The EU gravy train they're all booked on can't really leave until the Lisbon Treaty is full ratified.
The EU club has a membership of 27 but only about 5 (including the UK) pay any subs, the rest are freeloaders. It is worth noting that, only Britons over the age of 51 have ever been allowed to vote on our membership of the EU, I don't know how big a proportion of the population that is.

Anonymous said...

How dare Denis McShane imply that we do not wish to discuss the effect the EU has on our ability to govern and make laws for ourselves. The man is living in cloud cuckoo land if he seriously believes what he has been saying.
The EU is an interfering busybody that we the Great British Public dislike intensely.