Daniel Hannan: Peace, Easy Taxes, Tolerable Justice

Daniel Hannan MEP: “What has happened as we have gone down this road of introducing environmental, social and other standards is that, in practice, we erect barriers to entry. We allow – and I think all of us know this privately – the EU institutions to become a honeypot for lobbyists and corporate interests of all kinds wanting to extend costs that they happen to meet already to all of their prospective competitors.” European Parliament, Strasbourg, (2/6/2014). Source: DanHannanMEP YouTube channel.

Translated by Jadranko Brkic

Transcript:

Mr President, in Adam Smith’s view, prosperity rested on just three elements: peace, easy taxes and the tolerable administration of justice. The European single market really should rest on just two: mutual product recognition built upon enforceable contracts. That is all you need; we do not need hundreds of Commissioners and thousands of officials and MEPs building a higher and higher edifice of regulation.

What has happened as we have gone down this road of introducing environmental, social and other standards is that, in practice, we erect barriers to entry. We allow – and I think all of us know this privately – the EU institutions to become a honeypot for lobbyists and corporate interests of all kinds wanting to extend costs that they happen to meet already to all of their prospective competitors. Thus we have the opposite of a single market. Instead of extending consumer choice, we end up reducing it in the interests of a handful of big corporate producers, and then we wonder why we are getting poorer.