Britain's European debate is moving from process (referendum when? how?) to substance - the question of whether the costs of EU membership outweigh the benefits. This debate is healthy. What baffles me is that some of the most frequently made arguments in this debate are baseless yet enduring.
I have done a number of public debates with UKIP leader Nigel Farage and other zealous eurosceptics. Such debates are not part of my job: the Centre for European Reform is an independent think-tank, not a campaigning organisation. Yet as an analyst, I believe that the debate about Europe should be well informed.
Hard-core eurosceptics often base their arguments around claims that are simply not correct. Their pro-European counterparts are then left to protest lamely that the eurosceptics are economical with the truth. The eurosceptics have the initiative; the pro-Europeans have the moral high ground. As long as eurosceptics get away with telling the public that EU windmills are dangerous giants, the debate about Europe will be skewed.
One of the most frequently repeated arguments in the British EU debate is that "the Commission in Brussels dictates 75 per cent of our laws" (this is a quote from UKIP's website but I have heard the number repeated in public debates and in the national media). The European Commission does not dictate laws; it is allowed to propose laws. But it is the ministers from the (elected) EU governments that negotiate and agree them, together with the (elected) European Parliament.
The 75 per cent figure comes from a statement that Hans-Gerhard Pöttering, then president of the European Parliament, made in 2009: "Today approximately 75 per cent of the European Union legislation is decided by the European Parliament together with the Council of Ministers and has a direct impact in our daily lives." Note: Pöttering was talking about the share of EU legislation that is influenced by the European Parliament. He did not refer to national legislation.
So what is the true share of UK legislation linked to EU directives? There is no easy answer. First, EU laws and national laws cannot be compared like for like. EU regulations apply directly in the member-states. EU directives are implemented through national laws and regulations. Sometimes one national law implements four EU directives, sometimes four national laws implement one EU directive.
A lot of British business regulation is likely to be related in some way or another to the single market and hence to the EU. But the EU does not get much involved in setting British rules governing tax (other than VAT and excise duties), social security, pensions, education, policing (except cross-border operations), spatial planning or the health service. The House of Commons Library has tried to calculate the percentage of secondary legislation in the UK that results from EU requirements and concluded that "[t]his figure has fluctuated between 8 and 10 per cent in the last decade". OpenEurope, a eurosceptic think-tank, has spent a couple of years looking at the question of how much British law can be traced back to the EU. The researchers concluded that it was not possible to determine the share with any kind of accuracy.
Nor is it a straightforward question how much EU regulation costs the UK. The anti-EU Bruges Group claims that EU regulation costs the UK £28 billion a year, but it is not clear where this figure comes from. Some eurosceptics have also claimed that EU regulation cost the UK over £100 billion over the last decade. This figure is probably based on research that OpenEurope did in 2010. It should be used with great caution.
