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A new report from Open Europe, reported in today's FT, warns that 72% of the costs associated with regulation are coming from the EU.

Here are the key findings:

• Regulation has cost the UK economy £176 billion since 1998. Of this amount, £124 billion, or 71%, had its origin in EU legislation.
• The annual cost of regulation in 2009 stands at £32.8 billion.
• We estimate the benefit/cost ratio of EU regulations at 1.02, while the ratio of UK regulations is 2.35. In other words, for every £1 of cost, EU regulations introduced since 1998 have only delivered £1.02 of benefits, meaning that it is 2.5 times more cost effective to regulate nationally than it is to regulate via the EU.

On the Conservatives, Open Europe declares:

"The Conservatives have proposed a series of fresh regulatory reforms that are innovative and could cut the cost of regulation. However, the Conservatives have chosen to focus their regulatory reform agenda almost exclusively at the domestic level. This, in turn, could lead to contradictory or undeliverable policies since a potential future Conservative government will only on average have full control over 28% of annual the cost of regulation. The Conservative Party needs to make it a priority to set out how they intend to apply their domestic reform proposals to the EU decision-making process."

The report - which you can read in full here - sets out thirty ways to cut red tape.

Open Europe recently published a list of the 100 most costly EU regulations. See this PDF.

Four directives account for 53% of what will be an £184bn cost by 2020:

1. The Working Time Directive, to cost the UK economy £32.8 bn by 2020;
2. EU's Climate Action and Renewable Energy Package, to cost the UK economy £28.2 bn by 2020;
3. Energy Perfomance Certificates for buildings, a.k.a Home Information Packs, to cost the UK economy £20.2 bn by 2020;
4. Temporary Agency Workers Directive, to be implemented in 2011 and set to cost the UK economy £15.6 bn by 2020.

More here.

"Out of Control? - Measuring a decade of EU regulation"(PDF)

Authors: Mats Persson with Stephen Booth and Sarah Gaskell. Edited by Lorraine Mullally.

Publication date: 1 February 2009

An analysis of the cost of EU regulation over the period from 1998 to 2008. The authors claim that the cost to the UK of EU regulation is rising constantly and the cost has increased from £16.5billion in 2005 to £28.7billion in 2008. The report estimates that at its current rate the cost of EU regulation will have risen to more than £356billion by 2018.