Do regulation-obsessed ureaucrats rule the EU? - By Susanne Geiger

"Eurocrats" are often ridiculed for the regulations they pass, and at first sight, some decrees, directives and regulations promulgated by the EU do seem rather peculiar.

A second look, however, shows a method behind this apparent madness.

A cucumber is a cucumber is a cucumber. But in Europe not every cucumber that looks like a cucumber is a cucumber. At least it is not worth a lot if it does not conform to the measurements stipulated by the EU.

Let's examine this particular stipulation a little more closely. Matthias Wissmann, head of the EU Committee in Germany's parliament, regards it not just as absurd but also typical of the EU's faulty development to have a norm that lays out not merely how long, hard and green a cucumber must be but even stipulates the degree of a cucumber's curvature: at maximum, its arc can be no more than 10 millimeters per 10 centimeter length. If Europe is worrying about this kind of thing, argues Wissmann, then it's no wonder Europe's citizens aren't more interested in the EU.

The scenario is easy enough to paint. Thousands of under-occupied, overpaid and decidedly regulation-obsessed Eurocrats sit around thinking up absurdities solely designed to make the lives of citizens in the member states difficult. This dovetails nicely with the prejudices against politics in general and politicians in particular. The story of the cucumber regulation is among the most commonly repeated half-truths told by those who rail against the EU in Germany and elsewhere. Most who do so don't know the facts, and it's likely they aren't much interested in them either.

But Karl Voges ought to know. He is the managing director of the Garden Center Papenburg in Lower Saxony, Germany's largest cucumber trading center which sells 25 million pieces of the green vegetable annually. The cucumber regulations, Voges notes, don't prescribe anything but instead simply separate the vegetable into different categories. "We need that in order to pack the cucumbers appropriately," he says. "That way, traders and large-scale distributors know exactly what we are offering them here."

So why is that important? One reason is that the same number of top, Category I cucumbers, the straight ones of equal length, fit into every box, which means the middleman buying 20 boxes has no need to count them all.  Another is that the head of a big industrial-sized kitchen who is planning on transforming those long green objects into salad knows his peeling machine will be able to handle the - at best only slightly curved - cucumbers.  

In fact, because producers and traders value that their goods are easy to pack, quick to sort, and convenient to check, every country had its own regulations governing cucumbers, with norms and labels varying from country to country.  Then the EU adopted prevailing international standards used by the UN and the OECD and everyone was happy that the chaos of differing national regulations had come to an end. It was one of the many minor changes in the rules that made it possible for the common market to function at all. Just as an aside: Cucumbers that grow bent are also sold and eaten - but as Category II products.

Regardless, people bring up the cucumber regulations when they want to make fun of EU bureaucrats. Günter Verheugen, the EU Commissioner for Industry, said he "had never heard anyone in Germany getting incensed about the current national laws that set out the categories for 'Schwarzwurzeln' (black salsify, a vegetable) or 'Preiselbeeren' (lingonberries)."

So what is behind this Brussels bashing? For one thing, it is easier for politicians in the member states to blame Brussels than to look closer home. Agreeing in Brussels and then go home to London, Paris, Rome or Berlin and castigate the decision, is a great way of avoiding responsibility.

This behavior makes citizens in all the EU states increasingly feel that everything is being decided not only far away but also over their heads. That doesn't only reinforce sullenness about Europe, it also encourages disaffection with politics more generally.

Still, one difficulty is unavoidable. Rules now meant to apply in 27 nation-states cannot, by definition, be congruent with the many different national traditions and habits. That can be turned to advantage, though: 27 varieties of do's and don'ts will perforce collide, and then there is no other common denominator than sweet reason. Yet even if the EU can claim that its rules are more rational than the national rules that preceded them, it does not change the fact that they are perceived, at least initially, as alien impositions.

Sometimes national egos play a role as well. For instance, when the European norm for condoms was being decided. In case you wondered: Their bursting point needs to be the equivalent of at least 18 liters of air, the minimum length is 16 centimeters, the diameter 4.4 centimeters, and the "walls" should not be less than 0.04 centimeters thick. The amused expressions of the (mostly male) decision-makers were certainly unavoidable. Yet then it was said - of course about other nations - that the Italians (or was it the British?) objected to this norm because they felt too constricted by it.

As a matter of fact, it is not the EU that sets such standards but the independent European Committee for Standardization (CEN), an organization staffed by industry representatives. As medical products, condoms in fact need to meet particularly stringent quality and safety standards, not only to prevent unwanted pregnancies but also to protect against sexually transmitted diseases. Is that so absurd?

The latest items to be addressed were disposable cigarette lighters. They were to become safer, especially if they fell into the hands of children. That would mean, however, that they would also become 5 cents more expensive. At issue was the fact that cheap lighters, most of which come from China, have been the cause of about 1,200 fires in the home, fires in which 30 to 40 children die in Europe every year. What Brussels wants to prescribe for Europe's lighters has been law in the U.S. for the last 13 years, and in that time, death and injury among children have been reduced by 60 percent. Is such a proscription from Brussels so absurd?

Yet populist resistance has already had its effect, and the proposed lighter regulations have been turned down twice. In 2004, they were defeated due to pressure from importers worried about their businesses. Last October, they were defeated due to pressure brought to bear in the upper house of the German Parliament by the state of Bavaria. The Bavarians argued that the regulation was too bureaucratic and the procedure to be used for testing the lighters laughable. The Brussels bureaucrats have not given up yet, though.

Nearly all such EU stories are like this. At first, the regulations seem ludicrous, but another look shows them to actually be quite sensible, whether it is norms for truckers' seats (which has to do with ensuring safety), regulating the trade in bull semen (in this case, exchanges were forbidden in order to reduce the chance of livestock epidemics), or issuing passports for dogs and cats (which makes it easier to take the quadrupeds along on holidays).

Standards and norms make life easier, and they are to be thanked even for banal, everyday things such as that letter stationery fits into an envelope, a chair fits under a table, and a credit card fits into a wallet. They ensure that consumers can be confident their purchases meet certain conditions, and standards also help to reduce production costs.

Still, it may be that too much reasonableness, including the entire process of European integration, is itself a little eerie. Europe is needed and necessary, but the EU is not being fashioned because it is enjoyable to do so. There is a legitimate - and perhaps uncomfortable - feeling that power and sovereignty must be shared and exercised with others, and Europeans apparently need some means by which they can keep "those Brussels bureaucrats" at arms' length. And even those who value the unity of Europe find it convenient to be able to hate it a little too.

- Susanne Geiger is a freelance journalist in Brussels.