It’s the period of time that’s the problem
There’s a management rubric that - sometimes - any decision is better than vacillation over which decision. Everything is, always, subject to uncertainty and getting the issue out of the way in order to move on to the next thing has its merits.
Harmful compounds in children’s nappies and toxic “forever chemicals” in everyday products are among 14 hazardous substance groups hit by lengthy delays to EU pollution controls, according to report findings described by scientists as “extremely frustrating”.
The European Commission sought to push broad categories of dangerous substances off the market with a “restrictions roadmap” in April 2022 that was hailed at the time as the largest-ever ban of toxic chemicals.
But four years later it has failed to start the process of regulating seven of the 22 hazardous chemical groups and has “effectively frozen” progress in regulating seven more, according to a progress check by ClientEarth and the European Environmental Bureau.
Leave aside whatever might be our - or your - views on the decisions themselves. Well, OK, ours are largely this is pantywaists squinnying about irrelevances but leave that aside. If the decision is not taken then the entire industry sits still and awaits it. No one will invest in what might become illegal, but also few will invest in substitutes for what might become illegal. That the decision is not taken means that immobility in the sector.
This is, obviously, what kills both investment and innovation. If no one knows then no one can do things.
Note our complaint is not specific to the EU as a regulatory body even as said EU is a grand example of the base problem. One, a, problem with bureaucratic regulation of what may be done is that what may be done changes at the speed of bureaucracy. Thus economic growth - which is, obviously, the speed at which people do more things, or new things - is slowed to the speed of that bureaucracy. This makes us all poorer because slower economic growth does that. Thus and therefore we are against such bureaucratic decision making on what may be done.
But then the European Union, eh? These are the people who took 23 years to decide that apricot marmalade should be legal to make and sell. How is anyone supposed to innovate in an environment like that?
Tim Worstall