Actually,a lot of the fallacies about the EU do not exist or are deliberately mis-reported by UK sources.
For example, the minimum 'curve' on a cucumber is wholesale rubbish, the only thing defined by Euro convention is how long it should be from tip to tip, and that is only so they will fit in the boxes (and the journalists who wrote that article admitted they only made it up to see what kind of reaction it would cause). There have been loads of rumours started by tabloids, that fishermen have to wear hair-nets, tight-rope walkers have to wear safety helmets etc. There's a never ending stream of complete gibberish being made up about EU regulations.
That said, the problem, from what I read in the article, is a question of representation more than truth of the matter. It's true that bottled water will re-hydrate you, but so can many other things (which also, obviously, have water in them) I think it's more an advertising standards issue than an advertising fact issue. Now, I'm not saying I agree with the decision by the EU, but I'd recommended getting a little more detail before taking what a tabloid says at face value
The cucumber length restrictions were actually considered. A whole bunch of EU legislation is just like that: on superficial level it kind of sounds reasonable, but in practice, it gets ****ed up quickly or isn't enforced at all. I actually had a possibility of questioning European Commision official regarding traffic and energy consumption, again I got the same impression that what they do is good intentions with horrible consequences. The execution of Directives is left for local governments, and in the end the commission and governments will blame each other, never achieving anything.
I have not heard about safety helmets or hair-nets, but plenty of EU inspired stupid legislation has already been enforced here, some of the laws crashing and burning horribly. Which would be funny, were it not for the lost money in the legalization process. For example, the sad incident that what was to be dubbed as "**** law" here. Due to environmental regulations, it was required that the small cottages should have a chemical WC, and the old potties were declared illegal. However, since this took a form of extorting old people that live in remote locations to get the most expensive clean chemical WC as possible or otherwise they would be reported to police. After protests from several instances of the society, this law was then declared void. And I'm kidding you not, this DID happen. It also hints in to massive incompetence of the Parliament here (they have been dull earlier, but now we have legendarily dumb representatives), but that's a topic for another discussion.
Do you have any ideas of the success rate of EU projects related to science or technology? Look it up, it's not pretty. Starting from that I already
know that many companies will submit as many proposals as possible, since there is no real review process or built-in memory in the system, getting a project accepted is a statistical process. I also know that plenty of partners in these consortiums have no intention of using the money on anything written in the proposal. I'm going to generalize, that this stuff happens in every EU project, not only science related.
The present EU is really rather inefficient in dealing with anything, and it doesn't need hindrances from local governments to achieve that.
