Business & EU Directives/Regulations

In the three year period from 2010 to 2013 there were no fewer than 3,600 laws issued from the EU which is strangling UK firms. Business for Britain claimed that there are 13 million words in the laws which would take 92 days to read

Just a few examples of are:

• Banning the Union Jack from packs of meat
• Enforcing quotas in boardrooms
• Prohibiting refillable olive oil jugs in restaurants
• Directives forcing tv manufacturers to change their “eco-design” requirements for standby functions etc
• Labelling of spirits
• Use of rosemary extracts in certain low-fat meat and fish products

E.U. Regulations cost businesses £30.37bn a year, the 5 costliest are:-

• U.K. Renewable Energy Strategy £4.7 billion per year.
• Capital Requirement Directive IV package £4.2 billion per year.
• Working Time Directive £4.2 billion per year.
• E.U. Climate and Energy Package £3.4 billion per year.
• Temporary Agency Workers Directive £2.1 billion per year.

Farming

Farmers are not exempt from regulations and red tape. Apart from endless form filling, the administration of the Common Agricultural Policy is a nightmare often delaying payments to farmers and in the last year alone DEFRA incurred an “embarrassing” £640m in fines for failing to implement new EU Farming Policies.

DEFRA are now considering investing up to £45m to address the issue. Ms.Meg Hillier, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee has commented that DEFRA needs to get to grips with the problem.

Farmers now have an obligation to erect pro EU billboards on their land or face having their funding withdrawn. See below

The 3 million jobs lost lie

This started in June 2014 when Danny Alexander claimed “that over 3 million jobs were at stake if Britain left the EU”. He attributed this to the latest Treasury analysis. After a Freedom of Information application by the Open Europe Think Tank it was found to have been published in 2003 – hardly “the latest Treasury analysis” and the Treasury conceded that it is not an estimate of the impact of EU membership on employment’, “all it did was to suggest — in a very rudimentary piece of analysis — that approximately three million jobs were involved in our trade with the EU “. No mention was made of jobs at stake.

This false assertion by Alexander is still being repeated by pro-EU chancers in the hope that it will catch on. For more info please read below :

Meanwhile many of those businessmen who argue for us to stay in the EU are the same people who claimed it was imperative for us to join the disastrous Euro while the CBI and larger companies with lobbying offices in Brussels see the complex of EU rules and directives as a convenient barrier against smaller competitors.

The reality - The UK has a strong history of entrepreneurial innovation

This fact reinforced by Mr Fabrice Bregier, Airbus Chief Executive, stating (on 16/6/2015) that “R & D, design and manufacturing would remain in the U.K. whether the U.K. left the E.U. or not.

Lord Anthony Bamford (JCB) quoted as saying “U.K. would be better off out of the E.U.It would enable the company to become more competitive in global markets”.

16th March 2015 the Think Tank Open Europe stated that we pay E.U. countries £15 for every £1 we get back. (£55,000,000) a day is our membership cost.

Our membership of the World Trade Organisation prevents the E.U. from taking vexatious action against trade with the U.K. Furthermore we have a substantial trade deficit with the EU (and credit with the Rest of the World) which rules out any vindictive action. More at

Finally – Carbon emissions et al drive ensures that our energy prices are twice that of France and Germany and result in the slow death of our steel industry. See