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Unelected bureaucrats?
Jun. 15th, 2016 10:35 pmMy letter to local newspapers:
We hear a lot about "unelected Brussels bureaucrats" telling us what to do, but how many of us actually understand how EU laws are made? The EU Commission is equivalent to our civil service. It can propose laws, but it can't pass them – that can only be done by the elected heads of government (aka the EU Council) and the elected EU Parliament. The Commission is regularly described as a huge, sprawling bureaucracy but actually employs fewer people than Leeds City Council. It's also extremely misleading to state (as Farage does) that a large proportion of UK laws are made in Brussels – for details on this as well as scrutiny of the main arguments made by both campaigns, see the independent fact checking website fullfact.org. Rather than "unelected Brussels bureaucrats telling us what to do", a more accurate description would be "sitting round the table with our neighbours to work out common rules for the common market".
We hear a lot about "unelected Brussels bureaucrats" telling us what to do, but how many of us actually understand how EU laws are made? The EU Commission is equivalent to our civil service. It can propose laws, but it can't pass them – that can only be done by the elected heads of government (aka the EU Council) and the elected EU Parliament. The Commission is regularly described as a huge, sprawling bureaucracy but actually employs fewer people than Leeds City Council. It's also extremely misleading to state (as Farage does) that a large proportion of UK laws are made in Brussels – for details on this as well as scrutiny of the main arguments made by both campaigns, see the independent fact checking website fullfact.org. Rather than "unelected Brussels bureaucrats telling us what to do", a more accurate description would be "sitting round the table with our neighbours to work out common rules for the common market".
