Paperwork in the EU....

Even doing nothing requires paperwork...

Conscious of its reputation for unnecessary meddling, the European Commission has issued staff with guidelines advising them that the status quo could be the best option.

Under a heading "To regulate or not to regulate, that is the question", commission bureaucrats are told that when they are confronted with a problem, they should resist any immediate instinct to conjure up yet another EU directive.

"The option of no EU action should always be considered," say the instructions. "Tackling the identified problem doesn't mean that you need automatically choose a regulatory option such as a directive or a regulation. Consider the full range of alternative actions available to the commission. Is self-regulation a feasible option?"

However, nothing is as easy as it seems and officials have been told they must fill out forms which state that they have taken no action. The document, entitled Impact Assessment Guidelines, has been published after the rejection of the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands.