mr president first of all i want to join in the thanks to anja weisgerber who is a stalwart member of the committee on the internal market and consumer protection and has done a number of these very technical reports with great diligence and this is a good example of that
i think that when she started on this work which was soon after the elections last year we all felt that what appeared at first sight to be a deceptively simple proposal from the commission to repeal what appeared on the surface to be outdated legislation would probably be dealt with relatively quickly and without much argument
the time that this has taken and the relative complexity of the solution show that deregulation and cutting red tape are nothing like as easy as people think
it is very easy to come up with these facile phrases about deregulation but in the real world there are always people who want to keep regulation in place
as soon as this proposal hit the council we began to realise some of the deep-seated problems that existed from country to country
there were countries which had problems with measuring the weight of ships or alcohol meters or tyre pressure gauges
everyone had their own particular issue
my conclusion overall is not about the value of the proposal because in a few months we will have the alternative proposal which will effectively make this one outdated and we could almost have waited for that
my appeal to the commissioner is that the commission does need to look at its impact assessment and its homework on deregulation proposals much more deeply and get member states to engage with them before coming up with these proposals
on reflection i think we could have spent more time on that had we been allowed to do so
it is a success for the committee but i would say a qualified success and we need to learn the lessons from that as we go forward
