Here’s an interesting piece from Stephen Pollard on the EU Commission’s latest power grab, an attempt to wrest control of how pharmaceuticals are advertised from the EU’s member states to Brussels itself. That’s an idea that’s bad enough in itself, but take a look at the maximum penalty that the Commission is proposing:10 percent of global turnover. Pollard looks at what this might mean:

“Take Novartis. Its global turnover is $28.2 billion. Compare a possible $2.82 billion fine with the maximum fine that the Commission seeks to impose on counterfeiters: EUR300,000. Both offences are designed to protect public health. But clearly counterfeiting is more damaging than advertising. This is the regulatory cancer at the heart of the EU’s ills. Far from promoting competitiveness, it treats business as an evil that needs to be stamped on.”

And the EUs hostility to business is coming with a high price so far as Europe’s ability to innovate is concerned:

“So bad is the environment in the EU for research-based companies that Novartis, the healthcare company, recently moved its research facilities to the United States and GlaxoSmithKline now has its research base in Philadelphia. From 1990 to 2001 the number of research employees in the German drug industry fell by 36 per cent. Scientists are talking with their feet: the Commission’s survey shows that 400,000 European science and technology graduates have emigrated to the US.”

Corrupt, destructive, and malign, Brussels seems to be learning nothing from nothing from its disastrous interventions in recent years.