Firework displays from the largest Guy Fawkes Night spectacle to the smallest back-garden show are under threat from European legislation.

A directive already approved by MEPs and EU ministers will force Britain and other member nations to tear up their own safety standards and adopt new regulations by 2010.

Health and safety bureaucrats in Brussels also want to make manufacturers pay for the retesting of tens of thousands of fireworks already considered safe in Britain.

(Article continues below)

Tom Smith, the Confederation of British Industry spokesman for the pyrotechnics industry, said the new rules would make it impossible for firework-display firms to produce shows of variety and value.

"Not a single person in Britain will be made safer by all this additional testing, but everyone will be affected by it becoming much more expensive and bureaucratic to import fireworks," he said.

"It's a very real threat. You won't have New Year's Eve shows in London and Edinburgh, or on Guy Fawkes Night.

"We wouldn't even have a display at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics."

The new European standard will see the British Standard Institute's "kitemark" replaced with the European "CE" mark.

Full article here.