July 26, 2005
More EU silliness
(Note: I have not found a direct link to a news source on this. Take this information for what you will. It could be an elaborate joke, I haven’t done the research to vet this)…
Samizdata is reporting (via EU Referendum) that the EU is trying to extend shipping and port regulations to nations that don’t have shipping or ports. I.e. completely landlocked nations:
Slovakia and Hungary are being served notice that the Commission is about to take them to the European Court of Justice for not complying with certain parts of EU legislation.
Apparently, neither country has implemented a number of directives on maritime safety. Slovakia is being warned about having no legislation to do with passenger ships and prevention of pollution.Hungary has no “availability of port facilities for ship-generated waste”. Actually, Hungary has no ports or ships, being land-locked, as is Slovakia. That, apparently, is not the point.
This is why I like the ISO9000 framework. They give a general outline of certain things a company should do, and certain procedures that are expected. But they leave the details to the company itself, and just oversee that it meets the general framework. Likewise, in the US, we have a Constitution designed to be a general framework, and states, localities, and individuals are asked to follow the framework, with the Supreme Court overseeing whether that framework is followed.
The EU, however, went the opposite direction. If everything is decided, legislated, and uniform, from the top down, what do you do when something doesn’t meet the model? It sounds to me like they’re trying to fit a square peg in an round hole. Follows along the lines of their 448-page Constitution, doesn’t it?
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Um, how can “Samizdata” possibly say that Hungary has no ports or ships? They have about 1600km of navigable waterways and ports at Budapest, Dunaujvaros, Gyor-Gonyu, Csepel, Baja, and Mohacs, most of them on a little river I like to call the Danube.
Slovakia, on the other hand, has only 127km of permanently navigable waterways, but they have the ports of Bratislava and Komarno nonetheless.
I got this information from that Commie EU subsidiary called the CIA World Factbook. Are you people allergic to fact-checking, or what?
(Note: I have not found a direct link to a news source on this. Take this information for what you will. It could be an elaborate joke, I haven’t done the research to vet this)…
I lead into this with the caveat that I hadn’t even had any time to vet this. If you read Samizdata, they link another blog which talks about this, but doesn’t actually link any relevant news stories or sources to back up what they are saying.
I saw this story. I posted it before getting on an airplane, in a rush. Thus, I specifically gave a warning not to take this as gospel, in case of something like this.
Where’s the problem?
Problem is you should know Budapest is on the Danube, I suppose. Sorry about snapping there, I just instinctively react when I see something factually incorrect.