Sir, The judgment of the European Court of Justice to uphold the Food Supplements Directive (report and leading article, July 13) highlights the way in which the EU’s law-making intentions are easily distorted by an inbuilt addiction to over-regulation.

The intention to liberalise sales within the EU has produced a scheme which is hugely expensive in compliance costs and destructive of established and thriving businesses and consumer choice.

Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, says that our Government will “continue to press for the lightest touch possible in carrying out the directive”. This pitiful acknowledgement of inability or unwillingness to protect our economy and interests demonstrates the need for fundamental change in the objectives and law-making procedures of the EU.

LEOLIN PRICE
Lincoln’s Inn, London

From Mr Bob Graham

Sir, EU regulation of vitamins and mineral supplements is, as you point out, predictably and depressingly inconsistent.

In 1988 the UK and Ireland introduced regulations banning flammable upholstered furniture, and in doing so are estimated to have saved 2,000 lives in the UK alone in the first ten years of operation.

The European Commission produced a draft directive in 1991 intending to spread these benefits across the EU, where an estimated 5,000-6,000 people die in fires each year, but the commissioners went against their officers’ advice and shelved the directive — not because of barriers to trade or restriction on the free movement of goods, but because of the cost to the European furniture industry.

How’s that for inconsistency?

BOB GRAHAM
(Executive Director, Alliance for Consumer Fire Safety in Europe)
Brussels, Belgium

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