Jams, jellies and EU insanity

A couple of decades ago I used to stomp around, all Cato-like, shouting EU Delenda Est. This led to such excitements as working for Nigel Farage, standing in the euro-elections for Ukip, and other proofs that I am blessedly biased on this subject. 

My proof of the iniquity of the system was the Fruit Jams, Jellies, Marmalades and Sweetened Chestnut Puree regulations — the very thing that has just been amended. We now have to say “citrus marmalade” on a label, not just marmalade. As a result we have the usual divisions — those who say it’s all trivial and just fine and those who insist it’s evidence of vile foreigners imposing upon the Great British Breakfast. 

No one, of course, is actually grasping what the proper lesson to take from this is. Well, except you, who will be able to do so once I explain. 

In those original definitions, it states that marmalade may only be made from citrus fruits. This means that this is all nothing — whatever anyone says about it — to do with marmelada, which is made from quince. As we all know, that’s a pome fruit, not a citrus one. Marmelada is more of a quince paste than anything else. Well, OK, marmalade is citrus and there we are. 

There is also the claim that it was actually us Brits who insisted upon the definition of marmalade going into these regulations. This could be true but changes my point — and fear and hatred — not one whit. I even find it amusing that tomatoes are declared to be fruit for jam making purposes — which is fine, because tomatoes are a fruit — but so also are carrots. This is because the Portuguese make doce (jam) de tomate and de cenoura and they did some similar insisting. The joy of writing detailed regulations when the real world doesn’t obey the classifications necessary to write detailed regulations, eh? 

Except that we also get, in those same rules, that oils of citrus may only be used in marmalades. And, well, OK. Maybe.

Then someone in Austria got prosecuted for making apricot marmalade. It was more one of those Olde Crafte Fayres things. Everyone drinks gluhwein until they’re willing to part with good money for Granny’s experiments in the kitchen (you know, the ones she’s sufficiently unsure about to inflict upon her own family but will flog off a stall to the public). Given the Germanic attitude toward bureaucracy that prosecution was indeed firm … and then, well, even there it was thought to be more than a little over the top and so, mutter mutter, nothing more happened. 

Now, as it happens the idea of apricot marmalade sounds quite good. The cloying sweetness of such a jam cut with the astringency of some concentrated oils of citrus — well, I’d certainly give it a try. Which is where the hatred and fear of this sort of regulation comes into effect for me. 

For, OK, we have the original regulations from 2001 that insist oils of citrus in non-citrus derived jams (or jellies, or even attempts at marmalades made from non-citrus fruits) are verboeten. We have the revisions to these regulations in 2024. Which do, at least as far as I can tell, allow the production of marmalades from non-citrus fruits, thus adding oils of citrus to apricot jam to make apricot marmalade is now allowed. The problem being 2001 and 2024.

All of European industry now moves at this speed of the pan-continental political system

Yes, yes, this is all ridiculous, Worstall is getting irate about something as trivial as innovation in the “things to spread on toast” industry. But the problem is that all of European industry now moves at this speed of the pan-continental political system. Precisely because how you may do everything, what you may even do, is now subject to these detailed and prescriptive rules. Note the really important point here. You do not know whether the world is quite ready for apricot marmalade. You don’t know the size of the potential market, are not sure whether Frau and Mevrouw and Asszony and Mrs will purchase this for the breakfast table of the ickle ones. You cannot test the market because that’s illegal. You’ve got to go through the 23 year process of changing the law before you can even try.

You decide that you have a new chemical that might be of use in, say, whatever. There’s a lanyard in Helsinki demanding proof that this is safe before you can even work out whether it’s worth showing that it is safe. Just making — why anyone would is another matter, but say — tungsten sulphate will cost €250,000 in proofs. And if you decide to be just another producer of something already shown to be safe — say that tungsten sulphate is — then the same lanyard will demand a fee anyway. Supposedly to pay for all those who already paid the lanyard for the paperwork to show tungsten sulphate is safe.

It’s entirely true that we too in Britain have this same problem with lanyards. It’s impossible to build houses in West Sussex because Natural England worries about a pond somewhere. But we, we here, can change that if we wish to. As an independent country elections have consequences and policy can be changed. 

Now think how this meets a changing world. We all pay lip service to the idea of innovation, to that idea of new stuff, inventions, that make the world a better place. But no bugger is able to innovate because that’s illegal without permission. Therefore we’re in a static society while everyone else can do all sorts of lovely new things. 

The problem with the European Union is that whatever the people say, whenever, the system is unchangeable. The lanyards, the pettifogging bureaucrats, have won. My proof is the jams, jellies and marmalades regs — it takes 23 years to allow even the experiment of apricot marmalade to move from a regulation-harried Granny’s stall to being something the rest of us might be allowed to try. 

Now, true, I might be a little too Cato for most modern tastes, probably as a result of a part of my childhood. A part of which was spent upon the volcano that obliterated Cato’s villa with its hot spring at Tripergole. Just so happens that that part of childhood was when I learnt to swim in the hot  spring that now pops up just beyond where Tripergole now no longer is. It’s also true that I’m eliding two Catos, Older and Younger. 

But that it takes 23 years to allow apricot marmalade is indeed why Ceterum Censeo Unionem Europeam Esse Delendam. Our own lanyards are easier, we know the Tyburn Tree was at Marble Arch.

Seriously, a goddamn law about apricot marmalade? Thank God we left.