Good to see that the EU is truly honest

[NotAllThere]

I like your sources. An article on an American wood-working site, dated April 1998. Massive journalistic credibility. But even if it is was true, do you truly believe that Britain, Norway and Switzerland have no fraud at all.

If you really think this one shows that Britain should leave the EU, because it demonstrates endemic and institutionalised dishonesty, then I'd contend that your post demonstrates endemic stupidity among Brexit supporters.

[SueEllen]

or is that a lie?

Taiwan, Hong Kong and China have always been and are the same place according to the Chinese - China. And China is known for it's "dodgy" practices.

In regards to the EU -

Each country in the EEA has it's own trading standards regime so though the basic regulations on most goods are laid down by the EU it is up to each member country to incorporate the regulations into their country's law and then regulate them. The EU commission itself can only suggest regulations and get them approved, it cannot police them.

This is why if one member state doesn't agree with the a regulation and refuses to police it the EU commission can only eventually take it to court.

An example of this with goods is France and Luxembourg refusing to have the same VAT on e-books and physical books - linky

An example of this with people is when the French government put Romanian Gypsies on buses back to Romania. The EU Commission threatened to take France to court. The EU Commission then did SFA until MEPs from other member countries protested and the French agreed to act differently in future. linky

[missinggreenfields]

There's an episode of Knight Rider where an American company does the same thing. It's shocking what they can get away with!

To make matters worse - in that case, the baddie (spoiler alert) is a donor to FLAG!!

[vetran]

From a US wood working site

There is one factory in France that keeps a stock of marking dies of a wide range of countries so that they might stamp a product with a country of origin that the buyer wants. This practice began when reduced control within the European common market made it possible. The day we were in the plant, they were producing a line for a German company and cheerfully stamping every one "Made in Germany". They asked if we would like to have ours stamped "Made in Canada". We declined.

Some years ago, when plug cutters first started coming in from China, someone noted that a line coming out of Austria had all the machining idiosyncrasies of the ones coming out of China. A spectroanalysis of the steel (a form of metallurgical fingerprinting) showed that the alloys were exactly identical, indicating that it was almost certain that they were made from the same batch of raw material. Given the other matching features, it also indicated that they were being made in the same factory. Either the Chinese were buying theirs from Europe or the Europeans were buying theirs from China and remarking them. You can imagine which was the case.

For some years now, it has been impossible to correctly identify country of origin of goods coming out of Asia. Often "Made in Taiwan" and "Made in Hong Kong" really meant "Made in China".

or is that a lie?