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Thursday 6 December 2007

Join the Quest for the Source of EU Legislation


This is the Last Straw. I've just seen "micro-enterprise" defined in a document called "2005/0245 (COD) LEX 797" as:
"an enterprise, which at the time of conclusion of the payment service contract, is an enterprise as defined in Article 1 and Article 2(1) and (3) [oh, don't forget 2(3)!!] of the Annex to Recommendation 2003/361/EC".
I'm thinking of launching a Quest to find those responsible for this latest gobbledigook and demand to know in plain English what "micro-enterprise" was intended to mean, without referring me anywhere else.

But where to start?

In 2005, the UK's Better Regulation Commission produced a fascinating, literal "map" of what we might really loosely describe as the 'European Union legislative process'. See especially page 14.

I'm not being sarcastic here. The report is a veritable base camp from which to begin the quest for the source and true meaning of EU legislation. It provides a guide, pack animals, tents, rope, torches and other basic tools. The rest of the specific search is down to good eyesight, a laptop or PC, broadband, physical fitness, strength, caffeine, food, and several towels that can be soaked in ice cold mountain springs and wrapped tightly around one's head. Oh, and a journey to Brussels. With a lobbyist.

Are you in?

It will be very crowded, but ours will be lonely work. Listening amidst the din of countless institutions and committees for the mystical whisper known as the "Social Dialogue". For it is only in that stream of semi-consciousness that we may dare to even hope to find the truth of the coded messages embedded in the "stakeholder input", "advice", "green papers", "proposals", "adoptions of proposals", "opinions", "consultations", "co-decisions", "common positions" and, ultimately the Regulations and Directives that emerge six or seven years later to drive us to distraction.

No?

Yeah, sod it. I'm staying in London to earn a crust.

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