When a product is as free to be sold in Romania just as much in the United Kingdom, they ought to be under the same standards. It’s not fair, due to our completely open borders with one and another, if the UK has requirements on sugar that Romanians bypass and then sell in the UK. Harmonization is not about reducing competition, it’s about setting clear classification standards or (in some cases) requiring a basic minimum.

Tax has the most fundamntal difference here. Business in member state x cannot compete if it is taxed more to give to a commision who gives it to member state y.
Also if member state x has halfwits who cant see unfair trading conditions in a trade or industry it`s time for member state x to leave this EU project and get serious about economics.

Why do you assume that markets need to be “harmonised”?

Markets are about competition and choice for the consumer. As a result of competetive offerings, the consumer gets to choose the one that boosts their utility the most.

There seems to be an assumption that this is only about cost. But that simply isn’t true. Competition comes also in quality, in the form of the offering, not just the cost.

So, if regulation is brought in to insist that all offerings are the same (say, size of vegetables, allowable ingredients of jam) then competition and choice are reduced. Such harmonisation is thus the antithesis of what we both want and expect from a market.

That the participants in the market might want standards so that they know what they’re buying is one thing, but forced harmonisation, the banning of things which are outside such standards, is quite another.

It’s a denial of consumer choice, the very thing that markets are all about.

BUT, while people certainly can handle the idea that things may differ in cost and quality country to country, if you’re looking to build a genuinely common market with a system of unfettered trade within a group of however many member states, you need to have easily-comparable standards throughout that market to prevent businesses in member state x losing out because everyone can buy things cheaper in member state y.

Not much of an issue for an island nation, to be sure. But if you lived in, say, Belgium, 20 minutes drive from France in one direction, Luxembourg in the other and the Netherlands in yet another, such things become major issues. (My aunt and uncle, when living in Belgium, always used to do their weekly shop in Luxembourg, for example – much cheaper there.) I don’t have the figures to hand to tell you what percentage of the EU’s population live within a modest drive of a land border, but it’s not inconsiderable.

Yes, naturally the market itself should, over time, sort this out if its a problem that genuinely needs a solution. But the key point is that the market CAN’T sort this sort of thing out when every country has its own rules and regulations, distorting market forces and price inequalities yet further. Hence short-term EU legislation to replace the umpteen national regulations that were in place before with one EU-wide set of rules, harmonising the market quickly before repealing them all and letting it get on with things.

Does anyone seriously think this is enough of an issue for all this regulation to be worthwhile? Because I certainly don’t. I think people can handle the idea that things might differ in cost and in quality from one country to the next, somehow.

Could the market provide something similar? Quite possibly – but when these laws were introduced it hadn’t yet managed to, and umpteen competing national regulations and voluntary agreements were in place for each of the various different products. One could argue that having now been pointed in the right direction, the market’s now being left to get on with it – the EU’s just speeded up the process of market harmonisation. (But there’s no way I’m going to try and get into a debate about economics with you – you’d wipe the flaw with me…)

As for whether breaching these rules should be a criminal offence? No, it probably shouldn’t. But again, if you take their existence as a short-term thing designed to harmonise the common market, then some kind of stick was arguably necessary to go with the carrot of easier cross-border trade in order to speed the whole process up.

Yes, of course it was silly that the regulations appeared to apply to everyone, no matter whether you were trading in fruit and veg across borders or not. But at the same time how many prosecutions were brought against people for selling fruit and veg that failed to abide by the regulations based on something as minor as shape alone? Though the letter of the law may not have suggested this (which, again, makes them badly-written laws, something I’ve never denied), I very much doubt that minor breaches of minor aspects were ever intended to be prosecuted. (One might also ask how much supermarket fruit and veg is still in its country of origin?)

Likewise, their existence and the harmonisation in production that they have brought has brought in the possibility of more traders being able to sell across borders with ease. Now that the market is more harmonised and the regulations are being withdrawn, more fruit and veg companies should be in a position to trade EU-wide, and that should help bring prices down even further than just allowing wonky produce to go on sale.

In short: Should they have ever been any more than guidelines? No. But I reckon that the fact that they were for a short period should end up helping the market in the longer term. Take this as a precedent, and fingers crossed for more EU laws being repealed in the years to come as they become unnecessary.

QT – specifically on the consumer aspect (though this is a bit of a sidetrack). By “consumers being sure they are getting the same quality” I mean that if a banana costs 23 euros EU-wide, that means the consumer doesn’t feel he’s getting ripped off. Unless a consumer from member state x goes to member state y and buys a banana, only to find that bananas in country y are much bigger and tastier than he can get at home. (Not that I am advocating centralised price-fixing here, by any means…) That’s where the weights and measures comparison comes in – it’s as if a pound of potatoes costs the same in country x and country y, only in country x a pound is 450g, and in y a pound is 500g. The consumer in country x is getting a worse deal.

I don’t understand your point about ‘consumers being sure they are getting the same quality’. It’s not at all like weights & measures. If someone goes to the shops and wants some bananas, they can pick out the straightest ones or the curviest ones according to their personal preference. The regulations are just limiting their choice, surely.

You have a slightly better point if you are referring to the interaction between supplier and retailer. However, I still don’t accept that regulation is necessary. If a retailer receives a consignment of bananas and they turn out to be too curvy, why not complain or go elsewhere? Why should this be mandated by law?

Incidentally, one of my first ever posts at Question That dealt with this very topic. The interpretation of the EU regulation I was covering was the opposite of what you suggest, specifically that it was the curved bananas that were banned, which you have to agree would have been rather daft. It was, as you describe, partly true but exaggerated.