Open Europe is described on Wikipedia (HERE) as a "socially and economically liberal pan-European think tank and campaign group" which "promotes retaining a close UK relationship with the EU, high levels of EU migration, as well as liberal economic and political reform of the remaining European Union". It was set up in 2005 prior to the Lisbon Treaty by a group of British businessmen to oppose further centralisation of power in the EU.
What Open Europe wanted was a looser trading relationship with the EU without all the political union stuff, but the way it went about it has brought us to the edge of catastrophe. It bears a huge responsibility for Brexit. How so? First of all, read this article that appeared in The Economist in March 2010 (HERE). Here's part of it:
"Its (admirably multi-national) team of young researchers reads the English-language, French, Dutch, Belgian, German and Nordic press every day, and translates and links to stories that show the EU in a bad light, in a daily press summary that has very wide circulation among political reporters. Secondly, they produce special reports that delve into the detail of EU legislation and the economics of the EU, and produce hack-friendly, pre-digested reports on how awful the EU is, which duly sail into the press.
"I am sure that well over half the stories in the British daily press on the EU are directly inspired by Open Europe press releases and tip-offs. Many of those articles are one-sided, inaccurate and verging on the hysterical. But here is the thing, I do not really blame Open Europe. They are a political campaign outfit, and campaigning is what they do. I do not share their opinions on a lot of things, and I think they play fast and loose with complicated sets of data But the real reason their work generates so much duff journalism is that Britain has such depressingly duff newspapers".
The article gives examples of how it all works. The right wing press fired the anti-EU salvos but the shells were manufactured by Open Europe. It helped to poison the whole EU debate. But paradoxically it has now got Brexit with the risk we will enjoy a far worse trading relationship, outside the single market and the customs union and with a strengthened, closer and more integrated EU.
I have my own example of how Open Europe worked. They produced this sort of sensational claim (HERE) in 2015 that the top 100 EU regulations were costing the UK £33 billion a year (although this was tiny compared to the £118 billion that Matthew Elliot, the Vote Leave CEO claimed EU rules cost in 2009 HERE). What a great headline! The anti-EU press lapped it up and it duly appeared without any critical analysis.
After the referendum, some senior Vote Leave members started a pressure group called Change Britain (HERE). These are committed Brexiteers make no mistake but in December 2016 they took the £33 billion figure Open Europe had calculated and analysed which regulations they thought they could scrap (HERE). Surprise, surprise, this is what they found:
"The UK Government’s own Impact Assessments reveal the huge costs of these regulations to British businesses. Open Europe compiled a list of the Impact Assessments of the 100 most burdensome EU regulations to British business. By taking these 100 impact assessments, it is possible to work out which ones are ‘single market’ laws by investigating the legal basis under which the EU adopted each law, stripping out all laws that are not marked as ‘EEA relevant’.
"This reveals that 59 of the 100 laws stem from EU single market legislation and have effect in the EEA (full details of these laws are provided in the annex). However, these figures are of only limited value as, in reality, the UK is likely to only repeal some of these laws. This is because many of these laws stem from international agreements, while others reflect the UK’s political priorities (such as tackling climate change or providing workers’ rights)".
In other words many rules are from international agreements or protect worker's rights and so on. Stripping these out, according to Brexiteers at Change Britain, would mean savings not of £118 billion, or £33 billion but £1.219 billion! A bit different eh?
But wait, the vast majority (£1.058 bullion) of the £1.219 billion saving comes from scrapping the 1998 Data Protection Act. Really, which political party would do that? And most of the rest came from Motor Vehicles (EC Type Approval) (Amendment Regulations) 2008 which is a UNECE regulation anyway meaning we'll have to keep it or something very like it.
So, after all that the sum total of savings from getting rid of these burdensome regulations is about zero!
Incidentally Sir Stuart Rose was a supporter of Open Europe (HERE) and he led the Remain Campaign. Makes you think doesn't it?
