Monday, November 26, 2007

How Brussels regulates our every day lives

An article in Der Spiegel looks at EU regulation and reports that "The European Commission in Brussels wants to protect European citizens even more effectively against danger and disease. Soon there will be a well-intended - but mostly completely unnecessary - regulation for every aspect of life...
It seems only a matter of time before Brussels' compulsion to control everything is subjected to a nonsense standard, which would recognise anything that causes 25 of 100 adult EU citizens to shake their heads in disbelief for a period of at least 30 seconds as general lunacy...
For example, many European cities and regions, at Brussels' behest, are now developing so-called noise maps. To produce the maps, precise noise readings must be taken on every street... Some communities have already completed the mammoth project, while others are dragging their feet. All are furious about the new requirement. "We are drowning in a sea of data," complains Munich Mayor Christian Ude.
And in the end, no matter how costly the measuring process is, the results reveal what everyone has known all along: that it's louder on busy, high-traffic streets than in exclusive, villa-filled residential neighborhoods with maximum speed limits of 30 kilometers per hour.
Like Munich, many cities developed noise maps years ago. But now Brussels is dictating a new set of criteria, which means that the entire process has to be repeated from scratch. It's 'a lot of bureaucracy' and 'completely useless,' says Ude." READ DER SPEIGEL

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is NO government...how can the Belgium government interfere with anything?...and does anybody care?....are the Soviets amassing troops on the northern border?

Anonymous said...

you need an upgrade on your political science there poindexter. Brussels refers to the EU, not Belgium.