Red tape ‘costs Europe €360 billion a year’

UNNECESSARY red tape is costing European business €360 billion a year and much of it is there to keep special interest groups happy, according to a high-level report.

Some of these can be described as gold-plating by member states, where they add rules of their own onto EU legislation, often to suit local businesses.

A bureaucracy check by a European Commission high-level group over the past two years has looked at a range of EU legislation and found red tape could be cut by about a quarter in the next three years, saving businesses €40bn a year.