It’s always wise when looking at the European Union to imagine that you’re an alien (it’s the sort of thing MEPs probably do on away days, anyway) coming to the administration for the first time. If a friendly alien had pitched up on earth this afternoon and read the Foreign Office’s first tranche of Balance of Competences Review reports (clearly the sort of thing any sensible alien would do, after a period of revelling in the labyrinthine beauty and inefficiency of the gov.uk website), what would they think?
The first of reports – there are three more to come – were published this afternoon, delayed, it was claimed, to stop uproar on the Tory backbenches. It’s not difficult to see why this might have been a concern. Our alien chum might reasonably conclude from this batch that things were largely hunky-dory with the balance of power between Britain and Brussels. On taxation, for instance, the report said most respondents felt the current situation was largely the right one, aside from some grumbles about keeping legislation up to date, and the European Court of Justice, which some said had produced rulings which ‘had undermined the sovereignty of member states over their tax systems’. The report on the single market was even more cheery, saying:
‘To conclude, the EU single market brings with it legislative and regulatory obligations that are necessary to make the market work. These may perhaps have grown in recent years, and weigh more heavily on SMEs than larger companies, but there have also been renewed and increased efforts to reverse the process at EU level.’
It also argued that the evidence submitted to the review ‘highlights the strong influence the UK has had in practice on the development of the single market’ and that ‘this could well continue into the future and would be a strong reason for the UK to remain fully engaged economically and politically in single market developments’.
The review is supposed to present the most accurate and in-depth picture of the UK’s relationship with Brussels and the implications of the current arrangements for the economy and Britain’s influence. But the single market report in particular repeatedly suggests that assessing, say, the burden of regulation on small businesses, is too complex, and offers little more than is already available in the public domain. ‘Measuring the [regulatory] burden is difficult, with estimates varying significantly and often not comparable,’ it says, along with ‘assessing the overall impact of the opportunities against the burdens is not straightforward’.
Some MPs aren’t cheered by this assessment: the Telegraph quotes a number of them. But there are criticisms that it is worth taking on as well. The Health report in particular highlights areas of concern, including the Working Time Directive, which medical organisations warned was impacting training and increasing the number of handovers between doctors to the detriment of patient care. It also warned that Court of Justice rulings on freedom of movement and freedom to obtain services could impact on the NHS.
But there is a clear picture emerging for our friendly alien from these six reports at least: Whitehall has concluded that the UK is better off in the EU than out of it. And that the Foreign Office at least is a big fan. Perhaps the rest of the 32 reports will offer a different conclusion. But it is probably just as well that they were published in the middle of royal baby fever and outside parliamentary term. If the Foreign Office is feeling unusually political, it might want to time the juicy BoC reports on freedom of movement and other policy areas that government sources are suggesting will contain more criticism for just before the party conference season.
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