Gold plating and Law Making I – The overload menace

The concept of Law qua information entails a basic idea about communication between citizens and their governments. In an era of overflowing information, law is no exception to this phenomenon. Laws should be operative, both adequately pursuing their goals and simple to understand and comply with. Multiple reasons justify why laws do not always accomplish their goals: excessive burdening is but one. This scenario becomes more significant when one takes into account the transposition of EU Directives into national legislations. EU Institutions claim that national governments often pass extra regulation, piling their own regulative purposes on top of EU goals, in excess of the requirements set forth in Brussels: this is labelled “gold-plating.” The purpose of this presentation is to assess the inefficiencies and wrongdoings entailed therein, particularly unnecessary administrative and financial costs and the elimination of a desirable level playing field between Member States.