What is the European Union playing at? Just as we've begun to understand and accept the energy rating system, it decides to scrap it. At the moment electrical goods other than fridges and freezers have a colour-coded rating system, from A to G. A is the most efficient, G the least. Anyone can see immediately what it means. Manufacturers, in theory, must keep ratcheting up the efficiency of their products to stay within the band.
It's simple and it works. A survey of 7,000 people across Europe by the Energy Saving Trust shows that nine out of 10 recognise these labels. Now that we are able to make an informed choice, there has also been a massive switch towards more efficient products. How does the EU celebrate its success? By threatening to abandon this rating system and replace it with a series of numbers. As if to sow maximum confusion among consumers, the numbers will run in the opposite direction to the current system: the higher the figure, the better the product. The first will be last and the last will be first. Worse still, the top number will keep rising as efficiency improves, ensuring that unless you are prepared to spend an hour or two researching labelling trends every time you want to buy a lightbulb, you'll have no idea how your product compares.
Something like this already happens with fridges and freezers. Almost everyone (even, according to its latest press release, the Energy Saving Trust) believes that fridges and freezers are rated from A to G. They aren't. They are rated from A++ to G. When you buy an A-rated fridge, you are buying the equivalent of a C-rated washing machine. Confused? You should be. As the House of Lords select committee on science and technology reveals, the measure was introduced as a result of "political pressure by the manufacturers".
The spineless Eurocrats caved in. Instead of demanding that A-rated fridges and freezers were improved, they added two new categories: A+ and A++. Then they allowed the manufacturers to stick to the colour coded A-G scale, creating the impression that A remained the top band. Almost everyone has been conned by this scam, and we remain blissfully ignorant that we are still buying lousy products. Recently I told my local electrical retailers that they were inadvertently misselling their fridges and freezers. They were horrified: they hadn't the faintest idea that A wasn't the top band. Mission accomplished: the manufacturers can keep selling their antiquated models and don't have to invest in new plant.
This is evidently the purpose of the proposed new change. Europhiles like me find ourselves perpetually apologising for the institution we support, which seems to have a limitless capacity to disappoint. It allows itself to be kicked from pillar to post by industrial vested interests. As the Corporate Europe Observatory keeps pointing out, the EU fails even to acknowledge that there's a systematic lobbying problem, let alone to address it. The permanent scandals in Brussels make the revelations emerging from the House of Lords look pretty mild. It's as if the whole union is being run on the Italian model. I don't think this is what the founders had in mind.