by
N. Peter Kramer
Good for the fight against climate change; a costly operation for the consumers. Unfortunately it turned out that these new bulbs didn’t save much electricity at all.
Another proposal is in the making now: a ban of high-wattage household electrical appliances such as hair dryers, smart phones, lawn mowers and electric kettles for instance. Current EU legislation already covers televisions, washing machines, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners but smaller electrical appliances are not yet covered.
A study commissioned by the European Commission has identified 30 electrical appliances that could be covered by the EU’s Ecodesign directive outlawing high-wattage devices. The nonsense of all this is quite clear: your hairdresser, for instance, can tell you that curbing the power of hair dryers would simply mean blow-drying will take longer and in turn ‘that could lead to repetitive strain injury’.
The German MEP Herbert Reul (CDU) reacted that ‘the commission must stop these Ecodesign plans. It makes no sense to regulate the detail of energy consumption, the manufacture of each product in the EU and tell the citizen what he/she has to buy’.
It is also grist to the mill of anti-EU politicians. UKIP MEP Paul Nuttal said: ‘this is being done in the name of tackling climate change but the reality is, it won’t help one iota and will just make life harder for house-proud house-holders. We think that grown-ups can decide which hair dryer, kettle or vacuum cleaner they want to buy without nannying EU interference’.
Gunther Oettinger, the German (CDU) EU energy commissioner, has another opinion. He said that legislation preventing consumers from buying high-wattage hair-dryers etcetera was necessary to fight climate change. Can we, after this, ever take this man seriously? Mind you, he is the Commission’s mediator in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine about billions of Euro’s the latter refuses to pay for already delivered gaz…
Will European institutions and Eurocrats ever be connected again to the real world?
