Labour showed "astonishing arrogance and short-sighted stupidity" for agreeing Lisbon Treaty, says William Hague He said: "We all know there's far too much European regulation that makes it harder for businesses to compete globally. And even though every European country is struggling to nurture every green shoot of economic growth they can find the EU's legislative machine still manages to churn out proposals that would smother them, proposals that we and our allies must then spend time and effort in blocking. Mr Hague added that the lack of democratic accountability in Brussels caused "immense resentment" in the UK. He said: "Particularly in Britain, unnecessary bureaucratic intrusion into matters where there is no need for the EU to be involved causes immense resentment. A few weeks ago the EU almost banned olive oil jugs in restaurants from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean, causing indignation and incomprehension across thirty degrees of latitude. It's very welcome that the Commission listened to what we might call negative customer feedback but the worrying thing is that if it had gone ahead it would have been very hard for anyone to reverse. He added that the "core of the problem with the way the EU works is that as a system it is very good at centralising power from its Member States but very bad at letting go of power, at decentralising. "Underlying this we have that famous phrase to conjure with, the "ever closer union of the peoples of Europe." What was an understandable, even admirable aspiration after the Second World War is now seen as a justification for a process that has emptied parts of national democracy of its meaning and content. Mr Hague also said that if Labour had led Britain into the Euro zone it would have been "an economic disaster for our country and would have created a political crisis." He said: "Without the monetary and other policy flexibility afforded to us by the possession of our own currency the recession that followed the Great Bust of 2008 would have dramatically worse." Mr Hague added that change in the EU was "worth fighting for and that change would not just benefit Britain but every country in the EU. But these changes and reforms cannot be superficial. We need to give the EU the mechanisms to stop unnecessary interference, to decentralise powers better dealt with by national parliaments and governments back to national parliaments and governments. That is best done by giving parliaments and governments the tools to do so, and in that context I have discussed giving national parliaments a red card enforcement power on subsidiarity and proportionality.