"If a given set of standards is acceptable to the EU and our businesses are set up to work to those standards, why not follow them until you come up with something you like better?"

My understanding is that unless lots of things meet EU standards you cannot sell them to the EU. So if the 'standards' you like better are lower standards you have to give up selling that product to the EU.

There were certainly objections to EU standards. I remember the BBC doing a programme about standards for vacuum cleaners which were supposed to forbid super powerful cleaners and they found some UK businesses which claimed they could not function as businesses without such super powerful cleaners. There was one story after another purporting to demonstrate the 'madness' of EU standards.