Lord Davidson today published his review into the implementation of EU legislation. It recommends cutting the red tape burden in areas such as consumer sales, financial services, transport and waste to bring about savings of up to £670 million.

But his recommendations don’t go far enough according to Tina Sommer, EU and International Affairs chair at UK small business group, the Federation of Small Businesses, who says:

“Davidson’s recommendations are a good start, particularly where they tackle problems with specific EU directives that have been made unnecessarily complicated and burdensome when transposed into UK law.

“But this won’t solve the long-standing problem of the flawed processes by which all EU laws are implemented for the UK’s 4.3 million small businesses.”

There’s always been something about the good old British sense of fair play that means we’re always implementing EU legislation by dotting every i and crossing every t. The French, Italians and Spanish are far more likely to apply the gist or the spirit of legislation.

Lord Davidson’s report does call for stronger measures to help prevent future over implementation in the UK which, if applied, can only be a good thing.

Technorati tags: Davidson Report, Small Business Policy, Red Tape