You may have heard that the European Union is effectively banning olive-oil cruets and dipping bowls at restaurants.
This is a delightful emblem of the absurd technocratic regulatory meddling mindset that pervades the EU.
But look closer and it shows you something else about the nature of regulatory Leviathans. One EU official noted to the Telegraph, “It will seem bonkers that olive oil jugs must go while vinegar bottles or refillable wine jugs can stay.”
Hmm. Why would they regulate one product and not another? Maybe this isn’t motivated purely by health considerations. Maybe the powerful olive oil industry played a role.
Wherever you see strict new regulations, look for well-connected industry that hopes to profit off of them. From the Telegraph, check out these telling passages:
“This will affect us. It is about choice and freedom of choice. We buy our oil, which we have selected from a farm in Spain, to serve our customers,” he said
“Yet more packaging is not going to be eco-friendly and will limit choice to more mass produced products.”
And the New York Times notes this:
Fifteen of the Union’s 27 governments supported the olive oil rule. They included the Continent’s main producers of the product — Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal — which have been among the hardest hit by the crisis in the euro currency zone….
One criticism of European Union intervention in the olive oil business is that it favors big brand suppliers rather than small farmers, who continue to suffer low prices despite a fall in production in the past year.
An EU spokesman, quoted by Reuters, even defends the law on the grounds that hey, even the olive oil producers like it!
So, at least part of the point of the rules is to protect major industrial producers from the market — thus hurting consumer choice and smaller competitors.
This isn’t unique to Europe or to olive oil. Mass producers typically favor regulations that kill artisanal producers. In the U.S., we’ve seen this in toys, food, cigarettes, and more.
