In the endless, swirling fog of argument about Brexit, you occasionally stumble across a pocket of bright sunshine and pin sharp clarity. This longish read on the OpenDemocracy website (HERE) by Anthony Barnett from June this year is just such a moment. I suggest you try and find time to read the whole thing but if not, there are some key extracts below. He is discussing how regulation has overtaken sovereignty as the dominant force in our daily lives. Sovereignty used to mean something, he argues, when a monarch or parliament legislated in a simple world that no longer exists.
Now life is complex and legislatures have long since recognised they do not have the expertise to regulate effectively. Independent agencies have been created in Europe to do just that. In essence his argument is this:
- The public are actually overwhelmingly in favour of regulation (food quality, safety, etc)
- Regulation has become a parallel form of authority over how we live.
- The EU is very good at regulating things
- Even Brexiteers concede we will need to remain in the EU's regulated space
- Independent EU agencies use experts to research, consult, debate and reach good decisions
- Democracies need regulation for a wide variety of reasons that have grown out of an increasingly complex, science-based, long-range market-place. This won't stop with Brexit
- The EU has in this way developed over 11,000 regulations and set over 60,000 standards
- Britain’s industries are making it clear that they have no intention of replicating, at great cost, regulatory capability which already exists
- Hence there is no way of escaping the regulatory aegis of the EU, no matter what BoJo and the other Brexiteers claim.
It punches a massive hole on Johnson's proposition that we can benefit from regulating ourselves. The EU will continue to regulate and our exporters will continue to follow those rules. There is no sense in having two different standards and we will have to accept imported products that comply with EU standards anyway (or pay a premium for having our own unique standards) and if that's the case why would any manufacturer want to change? And EU standards are often adopted as world standards because they're so well researched and rational.
I quote a few things from the article, some of the quotes are by people other than Anthony Barnett but you'll get the drift of the piece:
"In Trump’s United States, the corporate lobby holds sway. It has just been reported, the chemical industry has “scored a big win” and persuaded the Environment Protection Agency that when it assesses the use of dangerous chemicals it will “exclude from its calculations any potential exposure caused by the substances’ presence in the air, the ground or water’”. Think about that."
"..fundamental misunderstanding [is] about the single market, ironically since Britain was in large part its architect. The core of that misunderstanding is to regard the single market as an economic entity or international trade area whereas, in fact, it is more precisely a regulatory entity and area. It is this which has enabled the EU to dismantle non-tariff barriers to trade, including trade in services, in a way that goes beyond anything that exists anywhere else in the world. But, inevitably, this entails a shared legal and political infrastructure. How else can market-wide rules and regulations be made and enforced? The failure to understand this basic definitional fact, allied with the ‘in 1975 we were told it was just a trade bloc’ myth, gave rise to all of the ‘bendy banana’ type stories that ended up with the ‘take back control’ slogan of 2016.
"Independent EU agencies are responsible for regulating pharmaceuticals, food safety, security, animal feed, maritime safety, aviation and many other topics. The agencies are located in… cities across the EU. The extent of the responsibility of each agency varies but each of them is engaged in enforcement, investigation and other regulatory actions. These agencies employ experts and produce recommendations or opinions. These technical recommendations are then considered as policy and political questions by the Member States who try after debate to reach a common position… Thousands of individual problems arise on subjects such as food safety, customs, health, environment, data substances, privacy, animal welfare, private international law and the rest. These debates are resolved within the technical committees… there are scores, maybe hundreds, of technical or advisory committees staffed by national experts. The purpose of these mechanisms is to help form and implement the language of the legislation — making it work in the real world…"
And in answer to those who think there is an unacceptable trade off between national sovereignty and the EU's regulatory eco system he has this to say, by way of conclusion:
"How can the country – any country – hold together, if its people are not joined by the same, single “deep-seated, human yearning”? The answer is that regulation and human rights make multiple identities nationally feasible, by providing a practical framework for living together. They could hardly be more important for us".
It's excellent stuff. I urge you to read it.
