My Cato colleague Marian Tupy sends along this unsettling press release from the UK Independence Party. I can’t vouch for the veracity of the claims, except to say that the seem to be consistent with what I’ve read elswhere.

The number of new pieces of EU legislation since Britain assumed the presidency of the European Union on 1st July is approaching 10% of all laws passed by the British Parliament since 1497, the UK Independence Party said today.

UKIP Leader Roger Knapman MEP said that there had been 2,072 legislative instruments issued by the European Commission in the past 3 months, all of which have the force of law in Britain. By comparison, he said that the British Parliament at Westminster has passed 25,271 public acts since 1497, the earliest year for which the House of Lords archive holds records.

Mr Knapman said that at this rate the Commission would have exceeded 20% of all laws passed by the British Parliament in the last 508 years by Christmas, and would surpass the total by 2008.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 30th, 2005 at 8:11 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.