Rob

The problem you will encounter is that each country interprets the Directive into their own law. Some do the minimum necessary, others, the UK in particular, tend to 'gold plate' the Directive, adding to it to make their own regulation even more restrictive than the EU intended. So you will often find that what is not permitted in the UK is acceptable in many other EU countries. Basically in each country you will need to consult their own regulation relevant to a particular situation to ascertain what is acceptable and what is not for that particular country. Their regulation may be different and less restrictive than the UK but still compliant with the EU Directive.

EU Regulations (e.g. REACH, CLP) are different in that they have to be incorporated word for word into the law of the EU country.

Chris

The gold plating has been done to death, many times. The UK implements EU directives with the speed of a soporific sloth, then dumps more into it to get it through parli-lament as a back door to political happiness.
After all, we do have an opt-out to the Working Time Directive (enacted as H&S legislation in Sloth-UK).
Slothfulness is becoming more rampant since the last election so hopefully the comments of Monsieur Cable will help:

"The key to the new measures will be the principle of copying out the text of European directives directly into UK law," said a statement from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). "The direct ‘copy out’ principle will mean that British interpretations of European law are not unfairly restricting British companies."

"This move will bring an end to the charge of 'gold-plating'," said Business Secretary Vince Cable. "The way we implement our EU obligations must foster, not hinder, UK growth by helping British businesses compete with their European neighbours."

http://www.out-law.com/page-11669

Anyway, you could try the EU for information:

http://ec.europa.eu/eu_l...on/what_directive_en.htm

The site has both EU and UK law online, and will doubtless be more helpful than .gov.uk sites.

If anyone is looking for a job, the EU w/sites are better than UK ones!

https://ec.europa.eu/eures/home.jsp?lang=en

David Cameron, January 2012

“take a lot of fear out of the health and safety monster.”

“businesses…..can grow without feeling they are going to be strangled by red tape and health and safety regulation.”

“You have got to look at the quantity of rules, and we are cutting them back.”

Only 6 weeks earlier…….Löfstedt Report commissioned by Govt to review ~200 (codes of) Regulations and 53 ACOPs and to consider whether EU Directives being “gold-plated” when transposed into UK law
“Reclaiming health and safety for all”

“the problem lies less with the regulations…and more with the way they are interpreted and applied.”

“scope for changing….regulation is severely limited by…..EU law.”

“many of the requirements that originate from the EU would probably exist anyway and many are contributing to improved health and safety.”

“recommend that HSE undertakes a programme of sector-specific consolidations…this would reduce the number of regulations by about 35%”

“recommend that” 5 (codes of) Regulations be revoked including the Celluloid and Cinematograph Film Act 1922 (Exemptions) Regulations 1980, and the Construction (Head Protection) Regulations 1989

gold-plating “may not be as widespread in the UK as is sometimes claimed” - at least the third review to come to this conclusion!

Government response to Löfstedt

“The Government supports the recommendations”

By 2014 “total number of regulations businesses have to comply with will be reduced by 50%.”

2012 Budget - 84% of health and safety regulations will be scrapped or improved.

To avoid gold-plating transpose EU Directives by “copy out”

DWP progress report February 2013, back down to 50%

Essentially, Professor Löfstedt concluded that UK health and safety legislation is generally fit for purpose.

The brief given to Löfstedt was a review the “scope for combining, simplifying or reducing the – approximately 200 – statutory instruments owned by HSE”.

Every other comment on this review has referred not to SIs i.e codes of Regulations, but to “regulations”.

A report, “Health and Safety – Reducing the burden” commissioned by the Conservative Party and published by the Policy Exchange in March 2010 identified 201 SIs (including many that have revoked or amended others).

These included 41 codes of regulations applying to mines. Consolidation of the extant parts of these could result in 40 less SIs but this is not the same as 40 less regulations!

We would simply have a much thicker book which in some cases might be less easy to navigate.

But even Löfstedt himself refers to reducing the number of regulations, NOT reducing the number of Statutory Instruments.

One recommendation from Common Sense, Common Safety to amend RIDDOR so that over 3 day injury accidents are no longer reportable though still recordable resulted in another clause in the main body of the regs and a completely new schedule – reducing “red tape”?

CDM 2015 - copy out probably means the end of two way competency requirements. So my message to our designers that they are entitled to assume that the contractor will be competent and therefore that they should not teach them how to suck eggs goes out of the window.

Probable result - huge, "comprehensive" documentation, instead of highlighting those issues which are not likely to be obvious to other duty holders, or unusual, or likely to be difficult to manage. See CDM ACOP para 133.

It would have been more helpful if politicians could specify examples of gold plating--it is a myth that GB has gold-plated the regulations proper in most cases!

The problem we have is the lack of understanding of the subtle differences betwen "Regulations", ACoP material & Guidance. Prof Lofsteadt review outcome was explicit in that


Extract from the Lofstedt Review:-
Gold-plating
45. As part of my considerations, I was asked to consider where in health and safety legislation there were examples of gold-plating: that is the UK enhancing the requirements of EU Directives.

46. Previous studies have looked into the extent of gold-plating and found little hard robust evidence suggesting it is a widespread problem. Lord Davidson carried out probably the most comprehensive review of gold-plating in 2006, and found that it was not as big a problem as often suggested.

47. My review was not principally focused on the issue of gold-plating, and I did not have the time or resource to carry out the analysis that would be necessary to expand upon the studies previously done on this issue, but I found little evidence to significantly challenge the conclusions of these previous studies.

48. There were some instances that I have identified and already touched on but in many ways consideration of whether or not the UK has tended to enhance the requirements of EU Directives detracts from the more fundamental question of whether the underlying Directive is fit for purpose and poses justifiable requirements on business. My findings suggest that in certain cases the answer to this is no, and the consequences can be significant. In such cases, gold-plating is not the main driver of regulatory costs.