Ronald Conway: What have the Romans (and other European partners) ever done for us?

Ronald Conway

If you were to ask the proponents of Brexit the same question about EU legislation and the European Court of Justice, you will get a dusty answer. From diktats on the shape of bananas, to the banning of UK number plates, to the enforced ice packaging of kippers, Brexiteers seek to portray an endless stream of mean spirited , busybody legislation.

In recent times those mythologies have been matched by the Corbynite left. Persons who should know better also seem anxious to downplay the benefits of EU legislation on the domestic polity. Any gains were made by the trades union and labour movement and would have occurred in any event.

EC Directives are binding on all member states, although it is left to the national state to transpose the Directive into its own legislation. The final arbiter on the meaning of the legislation is the European Court of Justice. So there is a certainly a diminution of UK sovereignty, at least in the sense that we have agreed to be bound by the ECJ interpretation of EU legislation. In common with every other country in the EU, including big hitters like Germany and France, (hardly vassal states) , sovereignty is shared.

And whilst it’s impossible not to be impressed by the level of erudition in Michael Upton’s recent “Valediction” post, how realistic is his vision of a malign corpus of law (which would be improved if only we had followed our Roman law traditions!)

May I offer a rather more mundane and grounded perspective. What difference has the European Union and its laws made to the lives of ordinary citizens of the United Kingdom?

The following is a whistle stop tour of some of the main ticket items of European legislation and jurisprudence.

Workers Rights and Health and Safety Directives

These directives make provision for equal pay, equal treatment and equal opportunities for men and women; prohibition of racially based discrimination and harassment; maximum working hours; preservation of worker rights on company takeovers by way of transfer of undertaking regulations; the establishment of maternity and paternity rights and the prohibition of exploitation of agency and temporary workers.

Whilst it is true that some of these rights were prefaced by UK legislation, it is Europe which has consistently extended the scope and closed the loopholes. It is no exaggeration to say that these are reforms which have transformed the workplace and social landscape for all of us.

In the area of health and safety, Council Directive EC/89/391 was transposed into UK law as the Management of Health of Safety at Work Regulations 1992, at a time when John Major was in power. The motivation for the Directive is stated specifically to be the reduction of the unacceptably high number of accidents throughout Europe, and the prevention of any member state gaining an economic and competitive advantage in the single market by a race to the bottom.

These and other industry specific regulations introduced the requirement for each undertaking to examine its activities, carry out a risk assessment and put in place preventive measures against risk.

As accident prevention measures go, these European measures have been spectacularly successful and have saved lives. In 1989 there were over 425 fatal accidents to employees in the UK. Over the last three years the annual death toll had been reduced to an average of 141, and is part of a continuing downward trend for all kinds of workplace accident. Europe is one of the safest places in the world to work, and the UK workplace ranks amongst the safest in Europe. In the words of Bill Clinton, “This is not opinion, it’s arithmetic.”

The Consumer Rights Directives

The Consumer Protection Act 1987 gave effect to EC Directive 1985/374/ECC, and was the first such Directive to be transposed into UK law. For the first time ever, it imposed a strict product liability regime whereby manufacturers of products were liable to all persons injured by them. The thalidomide tragedy, the world’s greatest ever medical disaster affecting over 20,000 persons, was a formative influence. To this day the German manufacturers Grunethal have failed to accept full legal responsibility, claiming that in the light of 1950s’ research the catastrophe was not foreseeable, and closing the door on any realistic damages claims. As a result thousands of thalidomiders have had to rely on ex gratia payments and are to this day undercompensated.

Since the Directive there is no longer any requirement to prove foreseeability or negligence , frequently an impossible task for claimants.

All that is required to establish liability is that the level of safety of the product is below the public’s legitimate expectation. The consumer is at the heart of the test. It has been applied in UK case law to products as diverse as HIV infected blood and child safety seats.

Other consumer directives have sought to harmonise consumer purchase rights for goods and services across the EU, recently addressing the sale of digital content, harmonising data protection rights, and preventing for the first time excess charges for the use of debit and credit cards, or the imposition of premium rate hotlines.

Read the full article on the Scottish Legal News website