If you want to discombobulate a Eurocrat, try calling him a Thatcherite. Gert-Jan Koopman, the European Commission’s otherwise articulate director of industrial policy and economic reform, threw up his hands in silent horror when I lobbed the epithet at him, though I meant it as a compliment. The game in Brussels these days — so I learnt from half a dozen conversations within a stone’s throw of the ultimate in glass houses, the Commission’s re-clad Berlaymont headquarters — is to advance a smaller-government, less-red-tape, jobs-and-growth agenda. But in the face of resurgent protectionism in France and elsewhere and the uncertain outcome of the German election, it is a game which requires an element of stealth. Hence the need to look astonished at any accusation of neo-liberalism, or worse.
Worst of all is to be called Thatcherite, which is a codeword in these parts for treating Old Europe’s ‘social model’ with contempt, while refusing point-blank to give up your EU budget rebate. But mildly, moistly Thatcherite is what this Commission would like to be — as evidenced last week by a proposal to scrap 70 draft laws described as ‘absurd’ by Commission President Barroso, on such matters as EU-wide regulation of sales promotions and weekend use of lorries. These are ‘things on which MEPs and Commission staff have been working for years,’ enthused Mr Koopman, a rising star whose skill in dealing with absurdities was honed as chef de cabinet to Neil Kinnock.
Koopman’s boss, the German socialist Gunter Verheugen, who holds the Commission’s enterprise and industry portfolio, is showing distinct signs of becoming an ex-socialist as he searches the mountain of existing Brussels legislation to see what else should be scrapped to keep the EU competitive. In the energy market, for example, Koopman says environmental regulation is important but cannot be imposed at all costs.

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