What made up story? The then Agriculture Comissioner stated themselves ""This is a concrete example of our drive to cut red tape and I will continue to push until it goes through. [...] It shouldn't be the EU's job to regulate these things. It is far better to leave it to market operators." when discussing the repeal of the regulation.
Products have certain quality standards. That is a good thing.
No, it is not good to leave it to the market. Because then you have giant corporations doing whatever with the food you eat without you knowing it.
Quality standards are necessary in order that people buying and ordering bananas can rest assured that what they are getting lives up to their expectations. Individual EU member states have tended to have their own standards, as has the industry (whose standards are often very stringent). The European Commission was asked by the Council of Ministers and the industry to prepare a draft regulation laying down EU quality standards, and this has been the subject of consultation for some time now. As such it represents a consensus position. The following points should be noted however:
1) These are minimal rules, applied solely to green, unripe bananas, rather than those destined for the processing industry.
2) These standards should improve the quality of bananas produced within the Commmunity. They should thus be able command a higher price in the Community markets. This should also help reduce Community aid and therefore relieve pressure on the Community budget.
3) Far from being an interference in trade these norms should facilitate it throughout the Community
http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/bananas-and-brussels/
Bananas are classified according to quality and size for international trade. Individual governments and the industry have in the past had their own standards with the latter’s, in particular, being very stringent. The European Commission was asked by national agriculture ministers and the industry to draft legislation in this area. Following extensive consultation with the industry, the proposed quality standards were adopted by national ministers in Council in 1994.
http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/curved-bananas/
This is a normal thing. On all these kinds of products, there are qualifications. A certain quality of banana will fall in one class, another in another class. There are prices between these. There are rules saying how the classification is done, so it isn't just randomly.
Watched the BREXIT film. I'm still voting out. Such waste.
The Swiss example was an eye opener.
The UK is not going to magically turn into Switzerland when they leave the EU. And Switzerland is still part of the trade bloc and has to follow those regulations that Brexit movie (just watched it, had a good laugh) is so against.
If it is about accountability, nothing is stopping the UK government from improving that themselves now. An example given was the referendum, how the Swiss can call for one and the politicians have to follow, but in the UK it is up to the Prime Minister. If your government wants to, they can do just that. Also see Holland, where we just had one (a bullshit one, but for other reasons). Nothing in the EU is stopping you from holding your own representatives accountable.
That whole movie is just throwing together some stuff that sounds bad, but when you think about it a minute doesn't make sense. So regulation is bad. We want to get rid of that and return to the mighty empire of the 1800s. The times with kids in factories and people dying of health problems because of the lack of regulations. Doesn't sound so good to me.
Then they talk about getting rid of tariffs. Only for ten minutes later to tell that the EU is doing just that and they have dropped majorly.
After that we are going on about how we shouldn't have a Fortress Europe. But when the Chinese flood the market with cheap steel which closes factories here, we suddenly want to protect our own industries. And when Polish people come to work in the UK that is bad because protection is needed suddenly. The whole argument doesn't make any sense.
The fishing industry sure was busy a few decades ago. Surely that was sustainable with over fishing. Going on like that without quotas would have been a major disaster.
Oh, and lets ask random people on the street if they know these EU people by name. Now go try that with a random bunch of UK members of parliament or even ministers. I sure as hell don't know the names of all the government officials in my country. Nobody does. But when we can't recognize someone from the EU it is suddenly bad?
The only thing I agree with is the oversight and transparency in Brussels. There is too much lobbying going on there and too little accountability. But let's not pretend the same exact thing isn't happening everywhere else, including the UK.
