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bentobean | 2 months ago

I’m not so sure that equating more laws produced with “greater productivity” is necessarily the right idea.

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VerifiedReports|2 months ago

Definitely not. The article does go on to acknowledge this:

"The result of this volume bias in the system is an onslaught of low-quality legislation. Compliance is often impossible. A BusinessEurope analysis cited by the Draghi report looked at just 13 pieces of EU legislation and found 169 cases where different laws impose requirements on the same issue. In almost a third of these overlaps, the detailed requirements were different, and in about one in ten they were outright contradictory."

Whenever I hear a politician patting himself on the back for how many pieces of legislation he got passed, I cringe at the thought of all the junk in it.

9dev|2 months ago

It’s amazing how similar legislation is to software engineering in that regard: It all comes down to managing complexity. A good law is achieving its effect with as little special case handling in as few lines as possible while covering most of the problem space.

johncolanduoni|2 months ago

Glad to see software engineers aren’t the only ones that count lines well past the point that they should be.

Eddy_Viscosity2|2 months ago

"Just ship it, we can patch any problems later..."

Archelaos|2 months ago

That was meant ironically. The article explains in great length that this quantitative "productivity" does not result in qualitative "productivity".

The fundamental problem, in my view, is that any significant reform of EU procedures would mean strengthening the European Parliament. In other words, EU governments must be persuaded to relinquish some of their sovereignty. Since the signing of the Lisbon Treaty in 2007, there has been no significant progress in this regard. This is also related to the fact that, unlike 20 years ago, many center-right governments are now in power in many EU countries, and strengthening the EU is not on the agenda of most of them—often quite the opposite. France is an exception, but Emmanuel Macron's initiative was met with little response.

anonymous908213|2 months ago

> sovereignty

I truly hate how this buzzword is misused with regards to the EU. Voluntarily delegating authority is not the same as losing sovereignty. If you can un-delegate the authority at your own prerogative, you have not lost sovereignty. If the UK, for example, had genuinely lost its sovereignty, it would not have been able to voluntarily withdraw from its participation in the EU.

FridayoLeary|2 months ago

For good reason. The United States of Europe is a pipe dream. Why not go in the opposite direction and drastically cut down the entire thing?