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 ...
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 state ...
.
In an operational study relating to the
European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, 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 ...
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 generally argue against gold-plating, because additional regulation tends to raise costs for businesses,]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 U ...
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 Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
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gave the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 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".]
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 in March 2000,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 ...
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".
See also
* Minimum harmonisation
Minimum harmonisation is a term used in European Union law.
Minimum harmonisation describes a piece of law (usually a directive but occasionally a regulation) that sets a threshold national legislation must meet. EU Member State national legislat ...
* Transposition (law)
In European Union law, transposition is a process by which the European Union's member states give force to a directive by passing appropriate implementation measures. Transposition is typically done by either primary legislation or secondary le ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gold-Plating
European Union law