LONDON, March 12 (UPI) -- Americans may not know this, but like everyone else on the planet, they are increasingly living by European rules without knowing much about who sets them. Microsoft has already learned to its cost the European Union's clout, having been hit with a record $1.3 billion fine for breaching Europe's competition rules.
Now American food companies, including Wal-Mart and McDonald's and the Wegmans supermarket chain, are following Europe's food-quality standards and buying only food that has been certified to exacting EU standards by the Germany-based GlobalGap inspection firm. ("Gap" stands for good agricultural practice and imposes strict limits on pesticides and fertilizer use and farm hygiene.)
In June the toiletries industry will follow suit with the unveiling of EU standards for natural and organic cosmetics, and clear labeling rules. A similar measure for organic foods 15 years ago is credited with kick-starting the organic food movement. The global chemical industry has already had to learn to abide by the EU's Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals system for production, use, storage and transport of chemicals, designed to make companies prove that substances in everyday products from cars to clothes to computers are safe.
Then there is Restriction of Hazardous Substances, which is aimed at removing six substances from Europe's economy: lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls and polybrominated diphenyl ethers.
We should not forget the directive on Waste Electronic and Electric Equipment, which sets collection, recycling, and recovery targets for electrical goods. Nor the EU's growing influence over the creeping advance of rules over emissions to tackle global warming.
European rules are also protecting global privacy. Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Procter & Gamble have all pledged to provide European-grade privacy protection to their customers in the United States and around the world. They have to tell their employees and customers what data is to be collected on them and how it will be used, and seek permission from employees and customers before collecting information or sharing it with others. The U.S. companies have agreed to do this even though it is not required by law -- except in the EU market that is far too big to ignore.
"There can be a race to the top in standards as well as a race to the bottom," noted Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who sees the EU's role in setting standards as a classic example of "soft power."
"This is the case in food inspection standards, securities regulation and other areas, as well as privacy policy."
These rules are set by the EU Parliament, a legislative body of 785 members that celebrates its 50th birthday Wednesday. The rules are then interpreted and enforced, and often widened, by the EU Court of Justice. Founded 50 years ago as the European Assembly with 142 members, four official languages and limited rights to be consulted, the Parliament now has real power to draft the rules under which the business world increasingly must live.
The world's only directly elected multinational legislature, the EU Parliament has the power to sack the European Commission, to approve or deny the EU's budget and to co-legislate with the EU's 27 member states in key policy and regulatory fields -- which has made Brussels host to more lobbyists than Washington.
Charlie McCreevy, EU internal market commissioner, has summed up the Parliament's clout with the phrase: "I know some ministers who would rather be in charge of the industry committee (in Parliament) for the power it gives them."
Despite all this power, the EU Parliament's legitimacy is under question through low voter turnout, secrecy and recurrent scandals. Last week the Parliament cited privacy in rejecting the EU ombudsman's call to publish full details of staff pay and travel expenses. A secret report, leaked by a fraud-fighting Dutch member for the Green party, detailed widespread scams in employing family members, making payments to ghost firms and simply pocketing their annual staff expenses of $300,000 per member. One dubious staffer got a "Christmas bonus" of 19 months pay.
"The Parliament cannot claim to be the conscience of Europe while this is happening," commented the Dutch MEP Paul van Buitenen, who put a summary of the report on his Web site.
Only a handful of members were allowed to see the secret report. One of them, British Liberal Democrat MEP Chris Davies, commented that some of his colleagues were discrediting the Parliament and should be named, shamed and even face jail terms.
"Make no mistake, we are talking about very large sums of money," he said, and condemned the attempts to keep the report secret. "It was utterly pathetic, naive and hypocritical. You wonder what planet they grew up on. The European Parliament is doing good work. But in terms of recognition and acceptance by the wide European public, these incidents can only harm it. And that's a shame."
The contrast is sharp between on the one hand the reality of the EU's Parliament's power and global reach and on the other the lack of accountability over its members' behavior and the low public esteem in which it is held. A vast and growing system of global rules is perched on a flimsy and questionable foundation.
