Barroso: Bureaucracy slayer or deregulator?

/ regulating / regulation /
Barroso is attacking red-tape and bureaucratic inefficiency, is he? By himself with no input from the European Parliament at all?

"Mr Barroso will next month attempt to put the EU legislative machine into reverse, with a programme to codify or abolish existing laws, thus cutting the EU's 80,000-page lawbook down to 50,000 pages.

But the plan was criticised by some members of the European parliament, who claimed the purge could reduce European protection of workers, the environment or consumers."

Yet one would not be paranoid if they suggested that along with any reasonable red-tape-cutting measures, other things are eliminated as well, indeed that might be part of the real reason of this initiative:

The initial legislative purge will remove 68 pending measures, many of them trivial or trapped in the EU's legislative machine and long-forgotten.

Some of the hit-list, however, including a review of a law to give temporary workers the same rights as full-time staff, would have a big impact on business.

Other measures to be withdrawn include ones on food labelling, safety laws relating to sunlight exposure, and the regulation of sales promotions.

Others are also skeptical, including the President of the Party
of European Socialists, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen...Left Euro-MP Kartika Liotard has written a letter to Barroso to remind him that, now that he has found a way to withdraw legislation even while it is before EU parliament, he can finally do away with the "despised Services Directive".