ClosingADoor
Member
Please point me to some EU regulations that have done a lot of harm. I'm interested to know them. You keep bringing up one cheese, but I think the EU economy runs on a bit more then that.Now I understand why you think the EU is a net positive, you fail to realize the difference between laws and EU regulations.
In countries, politicians make laws for their own population, for the people that elect them. And although they are certainly not always effective or just or good, but at the very least the politician is motivated to have the citizens be happy with the law. Many laws are indeed as you describe, mostly good with only some people unjustly negatively affected or not at all. ( E.g. Don't murder people is quite a popular law).
EU regulations are not made for the people that elect you, but against other countries. There's competition and strong conflicts of interest between different counties, and the goal of the powers there are to get something they want. To stick to the original example: In large area's of the Balkan and Greece people made Feta cheese for generations, Denmark managed to make even better Feta, and because Greece had to accept the 'protections' of so many regional products they to were entitled to forbid others to do stuff and as a quid pro quo Greece is now the only country allowed to make Feta and all the Farmers in the Balkan countries suffer, as well as the consumers. This is the example of a single product, and with almost all of them you find something wrong, and instead of a few dozens of 'protected' products there are now hundreds.
The more you learn about EU procedures and regulations, the more you learn this is the norm: Perhaps sometimes the idea can be justified in a specific situation, but overall it does more harm than good.
So when the EU has a new project - one which has a powerful long term effect in overruling national laws - people are highly skeptical.
And those other farmers can still make their cheese. They just call it something different, so it is clear for the consumer what they are getting.
Also, we elect the EU officials, either directly or through out own national parliaments.