David Cameron has urged Brussels to make major reforms to cut red tape in Europe in order to help British businesses.
In June, the Prime Minister set up a taskforce to address concerns that red tape was hampering business.
Made up of six business leaders and chaired by Business Minister Michael Fallon, the group’s objective has been to address the EU’s “pointless, burdensome and costly regulations”.
Their report proposes removing at least 30 pieces of legislation and if implemented, the taskforce estimates the boost to the European Union’s economy would be more than £100bn a year.
The proposed measures include reducing the burden of VAT returns and abandoning plans to force companies to pay for the retraining of staff who have been made redundant.
One of the members of the taskforce, Ian Cheshire, the chief executive of Kingfisher, told Sky’s Jeff Randall Live: “A lot of this regulation is falling disproportionately on the smaller SME (small and medium enterprise) market.
“There’s a big difference between the intent to work in a safe environment and then the fact that every single micro-company in the UK has to do a written health and safety assessment.
“If you took that away for firms under 10 people, you’d save 2.7bn euros in one year alone.”
Reacting to the report, the European Commission highlighted that in the last five years it has cut costs by £27.3bn and scrapped more than 5,500 legal acts.
Taskforce Calls For Curbs On 'Pointless' EU Rules
No comments:
Post a Comment