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How much UK law is made at European level?

I’ve just published an article in Business for New Europe’s blog on the simple point of how much UK law is made at European level, and how it has become a political hot potato:

Of course, the question can be tricky to answer, because a lot depends on what counts as ‘a law’ and what counts as ‘European in origin’. So a few weeks ago, the House of Commons Library did research, doing their best to take into account these difficulties.

The figure they came up with was 13.2%: that’s the proportion of UK legislative acts passed in the last 15 years, both primary legislation and statutory instruments, that refer to the EU or flow from an EU-level agreement. They admitted that this figure was likely to be an overestimate, though, since they counted every single reference to Europe in any law — whether that be a full-blown implementation of a European agreement, or simply a passing mention of the EU in an entirely domestic law, for instance to define a term.

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