Marta Andreasen, on behalf of the EFD Group. – Mr President, the Conservative Party, like the Labour Party before them, continues to pass large amounts of EU legislation in the UK. While their MEPs in Europe tell the public they want to end needless EU laws, their government continues to heap more of them on British businesses.

The fundamental weakness of EU regulation is the assumption that one size fits all. This is not the case. Each Member State has its own social and economic realities. Repeated attempts at harmonisation are making the situation worse, not better.

The bottom line is this. Do these reports reduce red tape? No, of course not. There is no such thing as better EU regulation; only more EU red tape. These reports are doing a disservice to small and medium-sized businesses up and down Britain by pretending that any reform of the EU legislative procedure will take away the burden imposed by the implementation of EU regulation.