Yves Mény on the fatal flood of European legislation

Europe has so many laws that they threaten to choke the judiciary to death, writes Yves Mény, former president of the European University Institute in Florence, in the daily Ouest France: "Our societies have an insatiable hunger for laws and regulations. Hardly any aspect of our lives, not even the most intimate or the most futile, is spared from the burden of European, national or even regional legislation. ... Too many laws kill the law! Because the paradox is that once the law has been passed it is often forgotten about altogether, as if adopting the text were more important than applying it. ... In other cases the law is a sort of pneumatic hammer for crushing flies. The legislator doesn't care about their cost because it is shouldered by the people in whose interest they are passed. ... We must accept that not everything can be subject to the law, and let judges apply existing law to cases ... as they see fit."

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