Away with red tape!

The EU is often criticised — sometimes fairly — for the huge and costly rolls of red tape through which it requires people and businesses to cut, especially when trade and travel within what is supposed to be a single market is concerned.

It’s right, then, to give at least two cheers to a reform which from today will make life a little less irksome for 17m or so EU citizens who live in a union country other their own, and for the estimated 2m daily cross-border commuters who work or study in one country but live in another.