Gold-plating is a term used to characterise the process whereby the powers of an

EU directive The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

are extended when being

transposed In linear algebra, the transpose of a matrix is an operator which flips a matrix over its diagonal; that is, it switches the row and column indices of the matrix by producing another matrix, often denoted by (among other notations). The tr ...

into the national laws of a

member state A member state is a state that is a member of an international organization or of a federation or confederation. Since the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) include some members that are not sovereign states ...

. In an operational study relating to the

European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development The European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) is one of the European Structural and Investment Funds which was set up for the financing of Rural Development Programme (RDP) actions by European Union Council Regulation (EC) No 1290/ ...

, the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...

treats gold-plating as a source of interference with policy outcomes, defining gold-plating as "an excess of norms, guidelines and procedures accumulated at national, regional and local levels, which interfere with the expected policy goals to be achieved by such regulation". Business

lobbyists In politics, lobbying, persuasion or interest representation is the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying, which ...

generally argue against gold-plating, because additional regulation tends to raise costs for businesses, but there are a few companies who stand to benefit from it. In case of gold-plating, the

European Court of Justice The European Court of Justice (ECJ, french: Cour de Justice européenne), formally just the Court of Justice, is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law. As a part of the Court of Justice of the European Un ...

does in fact have jurisdiction to interpret EU law, even if the case at hand is not directly governed by EU law.

Examples

The UK

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gave the

Agency Workers Regulations 2010 The Agency Workers Regulations 2010SI 2010/93 are a statutory instrument forming part of United Kingdom labour law. They aim to combat discrimination against people who work for employment agencies, by stating that agency workers should be no l ...

as an example of gold-plated EU legislation, because it had granted temporary workers the right to performance-related bonuses, something that was not in the original EU law, which dealt with "the right to the same pay as permanent staff". In Italy, gold-plating has often been used as a device to pass through controversial measures and to ensure a lower degree of parliamentary scrutiny, particularly in periods of weak government.

Reform

EU governments committed themselves to a

deregulation Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a ...

agenda at the

Lisbon Summit Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administrative limits w ...

in March 2000, and as a consequence, the

has supported more

maximum harmonisation Maximum harmonisation is a term used in EU law. If a piece of law (usually a directive but occasionally also a regulation) is described as maximum harmonisation, national law may not exceed the terms of the legislation. In practice, that prohibi ...

measures in recent years, which effectively prohibit gold-plating. Within the UK, the 2010 coalition agreement included a pledge to end gold-plating; the original policy guidelines were finalised in June 2011. Specifically, they stipulate that all EU legislation be reviewed every five years by "all departments...to ensure that they are only implementing the absolute minimum regulation necessary to comply". The principle of copying out the text of European directives directly into UK law was adopted in 2010, along with avoiding transposition into UK law earlier than the date specified in the relevant directive, unless there were "compelling reasons" for earlier implementation. Previously, a 2006 review of gold-plating by Lord Davidson QC found that some EU laws had indeed been "over-implemented", but Lord Davidson had cautioned against "copying out the text of a directive".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gold-Plating European Union law

Examples

Reform

See also

References