Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-19-Speech-4-068"
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"en.20080619.16.4-068"2
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"Madam President, the 40th anniversary seems an opportune moment to address a misapprehension that has existed, I think, in our country ever since your constituents and mine voted to join what they thought was the Common Market some 35 years ago – the misapprehension concerning the difference between a free-trade area and a customs union.
What I think most British people understood by the Common Market was that there would be mutual product recognition, that if you could sell something in the UK, you should also be allowed to sell it in Germany, France and Spain and the other way round.
But of course what we have instead is standardisation. Something is required to contain certain ingredients, to be of a volume of not less than ‘x’ and not more than ‘y’, and even if that product was never intended for export, even if it never crosses frontiers, it can find itself criminalised and prohibited in its own country; and this is often because a rival somewhere in the EU – as often as not in Britain – which happens to meet all of a group of specifications anyway, uses the mechanisms of the European Union in order to pass on its costs to its rivals.
I think it is a shame that we have lost the original concept of free circulation of goods and services in favour of harmonisation, which reduces consumer choice."@en1
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