Conservative Euro-MP Daniel Hannan has responded robustly to yesterday’s government report on alternatives to EU membership. He says the government tells a “lie” in saying Norway applies 75 per cent of EU law. He cites “official statistics” showing that Norway, as a member of the European Economic Area, adopts just 9 per cent of EU laws.
But it is Hannan who has it wrong. It is true that Norway does not take part in all areas of EU law – such as the common agricultural policy. However, the figures he quotes are neither “official” nor a true reflection of how Norway applies EU law. The figure of “approximately three-quarters” of EU law cited by the UK government comes not from a “stray remark by a Eurofanatical Norwegian minister”, as Hannan states, but from a 900-page expert report commissioned by the Oslo government.
Hannan says that, “According to the EFTA Secretariat, the EU generated 52,183 legal instruments between 2000 and 2013, of which Norway adopted 4,724 – 9 per cent.”
This is not true. Tore Groenningsaeter, head of information and communications at the EFTA Secretariat, confirmed to InFacts that it had provided figures on the number of EU acts in force in the EEA Agreement but had “not compared these to EU figures”, which come from a different database. Comparing the two to reach a figure of 9 per cent is not an “official statistic”. Rather, it comes from the avowedly political Norwegian “No to EU” campaign.
As well as being unofficial, the figures are highly dubious, purporting to compare two sets of figures which are not directly comparable and counting many legal acts which are inconsequential or limited in effect.
Of the 2,070 legal acts in 2012, a total of 743 (36 per cent) were “decisions”, with direct effect, and often targeted or administrative in nature. A recent example ends anti-dumping proceedings on Indian silico-manganese. Likewise, Commission regulations – which also have direct application and, unlike Council or Parliament regulations, are generally technical or limited – accounted for 1,113 (54 per cent) of those legal acts. A recent example determines the customs treatment of glitter lamps.
Morten Harper, chief researcher at No to EU, confirmed to InFacts that they counted all legislation: adopted EU directives, regulations and other legal decisions, as well as international agreements. Harper also noted that the expert report referred to above cites a figure of 10 to 15 per cent, including Schengen and other Norway-EU agreements, which is not so different from the No to EU number. The report notes that this figure includes many time-limited laws which lapse before they can be applied in Norway, and that a particularly large share of EU laws concern agriculture, fisheries and customs, in which Norway does not take part. Later on the report cites the figure of “about three quarters”, on the basis that Norway largely or fully applies 23 of the 31 chapters in Iceland’s application to join the EU – with each chapter corresponding to a broad policy area, such as transport or economic and monetary union. This is the figure used in the introduction to the report, but for No to EU, this methodology is “too vague”.
As InFacts has said previously, counting laws is rarely a useful statistical tool. A more meaningful figure Hannan could have given was how many of the 52,183 legal instruments Norway got to vote on. The answer is zero. The UK, by contrast, has 12.7 per cent of the votes in the Council of the EU and has been on the winning side 87 per cent of the time. Oslo’s lack of influence is the reason why Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg favours EU membership.
This article was edited on 4 March to include No to EU’s response, which appears in the penultimate paragraph. Daniel Hannan did not reply to InFacts’ request for comment.
Edited by Alan Wheatley