Our chance to pull down ‘fortress Europe’

IS Environment Minister John Gormley putting the cart before the horse?

I have read that the high cost of compact fluorescent light bulbs in Europe is due to a protective tariff on imports from China in order to benefit a large EU-based manufacturer.

If this is accurate, we are now extending the CAP, which enriches farmers, to benefit industrialists as well.

All these ‘fortress Europe’ restrictions increase the cost of living for many ordinary citizens. Is it perhaps time that out-of-touch Eurocrats got their priorities right, and that Ireland told them so in the forthcoming referendum.

Well-meaning directives aredispatched by the dozen to governments throughout Europe each day.

Many are consigned to the litter bin while the taxpayer forks out huge fines for the exercise, or hugely increased anti-pollution charges, etc, if powerful lobby groups are offended.

Mr Gormley’s scheme seems to be another example of disjointed, if well-intended, thinking.

EU bureaucrats need to be confronted and a root-and-branch overhaul of the whole system is needed. This is now uniquely in our power to influence.

John McDermott

Puerto Rico

Gran Canaria

Spain