With thanks to Ed Jones...
On Thusday, February 22, The Wall Street Journal Europe
published an interesting opinion on the harmonic current
emissions standard.
The opinion is by Rob Hunter, a lawyer and Chairman of
the Centre for the New Europe, a Brussels-based think
tank.
Mr. Hunter is quite critical of the EU "New Approach"
process. He says:
"In this procedure, the EU sets vague safety and
technical rules for everything from toys to super-
computers -- for example, toys shall be 'safe.' The
EU then delegates to private standardization bodies
the drafting of detailed requirements explaining
what the delphic rules mean."
"The supposed advantage of this New Approach is
twofold. For industry, it gets to write the detailed
rules applying to it. For the Commission, the New
Approach frees it from a burdenom task; it also
allows the Commission to claim that it has nothing to
do with writing the standards, and hence cannot be
held responsible."
"All this sounds quite above-board. It isn't."
"For one thing, the standards are not merelay a means
of proving compliance with the underlying legislation.
They actually determine the meaning of the law itself."
Mr. Hunter discusses "...the way these standard-setting
bodies can be gamed by industry insiders for advantage."
Mr. Hunter goes on to show how the New Approach process
allows the Commission to sidestep "...WTO laws prohibiting
'mandatory' product measures that create 'unnecessary
obstacles' to international trade."
Mr. Hunter's opinion goes on to show that the only ones
who benefit from the harmonic current emission standard
are the European electricity distributors. They "avoid
investments in bolstering their networks against the
theoretical harmonics risk" at the cost of manufacturers
and consumers.
Best regards,
Rich
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