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Red tape bonfire 'could keep Britain in EU': report

14 October 2014, 22:53 CET
Red tape bonfire 'could keep Britain in EU': report

Edmund Stoiber - Photo EC

(BRUSSELS) - Plans by Brussels to slash the red tape that businesses face could help keep Britain in the European Union, the man behind the proposals Edmund Stoiber said on Tuesday.

Edmund Stoiber, the former Bavarian premier, unveiled a report on reducing regulation, including exempting small- and medium-sized firms from rules governing big business.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to win major reform of the 28-nation EU before holding a referendum on membership of the bloc in 2017.

Stoiber said there was "a lot that I think is right" in proposals by Cameron for cutting back regulation that were echoed in his own report.

He said he hoped the ideas "can make a contribution to making the somewhat negative British stance towards the EU less negative."

"We certainly want the UK to remain a member of the EU. We need them," Stoiber told a press conference alongside outgoing European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, who called for the report seven years ago.

Barroso cited the example of a mooted ban on restaurants serving olive oil in jugs, which the Commission dropped last year, saying that "regulating it at EU level would do more harm than good to the European idea."

Cuts in red tape would save the EU 41 billion euros ($51 billion) a year, according to the report by Stoiber's "High Level Group on Administrative Burdens", which is published in English, French and German.

"The EU will never be as bureaucratic in the future as it once was," Stoiber said.

British business minister Matthew Hancock said he welcomed Stoiber's report.

Incoming Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has given his right-hand man Frans Timmermans the job of overseeing the cutting of EU red tape over the next five years.

Timmermans' task is widely viewed as being to win over Britain, which has repeatedly complained that the EU meddles unnecessarily in the affairs of member states.

Smart Regulation in the EU - making EU law lighter

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