I’ve just published an article in Business for New Europe’s blog on the simple point of how much UK law is made at European level, and how it has become a political hot potato:
Of course, the question can be tricky to answer, because a lot depends on what counts as ‘a law’ and what counts as ‘European in origin’. So a few weeks ago, the House of Commons Library did research, doing their best to take into account these difficulties.
The figure they came up with was 13.2%: that’s the proportion of UK legislative acts passed in the last 15 years, both primary legislation and statutory instruments, that refer to the EU or flow from an EU-level agreement. They admitted that this figure was likely to be an overestimate, though, since they counted every single reference to Europe in any law — whether that be a full-blown implementation of a European agreement, or simply a passing mention of the EU in an entirely domestic law, for instance to define a term.
