In my own field - yachting - we are already stuck in a bureaucratic swamp just 6 years after a European Directive was made LAW. This is the RCD (Recreational Craft Directive).

In theory these European directives create an equal playing field for trade in the whole of Europe. In practice they create an expensive, bureaucratic system that benefits only the large Industrial producers and puts small concerns out of business.

So how was the world of yachting organised before the RCD?

1) The Yacht Magazines provided an open democratic forum in technical and safety matters through articles by "experts", who could immediately be publicly challenged by other experts, or readers with common sense.

2) Yacht Magazines also tested new yachts and equipment. Any defects or doubts about the tested designs were immediately apparent to the public.

3) The Royal Yachting Association (in Britain) represented the needs of the yachting public to the government.

4) The insurance companies and the surveys required by them also kept safety and technical standards high.

5) Those who wanted absolute certainty in quality standards for their yacht could have the yacht built under survey by Lloyds, Veritas etc, for extra cost.

So why do we have the RCD?

Originally, around 1982, it was the idea of a small group of paid officials of the British Marine Industries Federation, who claimed that there were sales restrictions on British boats in Europe. The 1982 proposal was dropped after objections from the RYA, but raised again by the same officials around 1990. By the 1990s large industrial GRP boat building companies had emerged in France. Encouraged by these big companies, who would benefit from it, the RCD came into being in June 1998.

In 1998 when the Directive was made law, many articles were written in major Newspapers and Yacht Magazines, giving examples of small boat building businesses being put out of business by the Directive.

Unfortunately these things soon stop being "news", the problems however still carry on. Many small boat-building businesses HAVE been put out of business (their voices are now no longer heard).

The RCD, set up for the benefit of large scale manufacturers, effectively overthrew the existing, 150 year old, Democratic Open System by Yachtsmen for Yachtsmen in overseeing Design/Safety/Construction.

So why raise the subject of the RCD now?

A year ago we found that one of the regulations imposed - concerning escape hatches - was unsuitable and in our view dangerous for our designs. We sent in a "proposal" to have an alternative interpretation of the rules applied to our designs.

Such is the bureaucratic machine, that it took ten months to get a hearing on this subject. We had to write numerous letters asking for action, while our builders were agitating for an answer, but up against a faceless bureaucratic body, we found it hard to know where to lodge our complaints.

What our experience does demonstrate is how the RCD has become, as forecast in 1998, a restrictive, expensive, bureaucratic, time wasting body, of benefit only to a few large-scale industrial boat builders.

My own seemingly minor problem gives an insight into a major European Democratic problem. Who controls the present and future Europe? Is the future to be a People's Democracy as was the British world of yachting before the RCD, or is it going to be controlled by secret untouchable committees in a type of world first described by Kafka?

Yours, with concern, James Wharram

Nik Parker's reply to James Wharram's comments on the BMF: James Wharram's recollections of the development and introduction of the RCD are incorrect.

The RCD came about because there were difficulties in selling into Europe - and there still are:

we hear regularly of "officials" rejecting boats because the paperwork doesn't match what they're expecting.

The RCD came into law before 1998 - it was in EC law in 1994 and UK law by 1996. It became mandatory in all EU member states in June 1998.

I've often heard this claim that the RCD put small builders out of business, but I'm not aware that there is any evidence that the RCD alone forced a closure. Certainly there is an additional element of project management to think about, but in reality there should be nothing outside the usual scope of work of the professional boatbuilder.

It's true that everyone would like to think they can do without regulation, but in the modern world this is not how things operate and the RCD was set up to harmonise regulation across Europe to make it easier for everyone to deal across boarders.

Nik Parker, BMF technical director