If Boris Johnson was still a Brussels-mocking reporter on TheDaily Telegraph, he could hardly wish for a better example of the EU’s dysfunctional policy-making than the green taxonomy. It makes his fantasy story about banning bent bananas look like a model of good governance.

Designed to help channel investment towards sustainable activities, the taxonomy has suffered from all the problems that bedevil EU rule-making. Critics warned that assessing every type of economic activity to determine whether it is green or not was wildly over-ambitious and would be so time-consuming that it was bound to be out of date before it was finished.