Eurobloat #0002 • June 2010
With the single currency visibly on fire, the natural response from Brussels in June 2010 was not less ambition but more: bigger powers, more members, new taxes, and a fresh sermon about an economic government for the continent. Here is what the rescuers got up to.
Folly of the Month: Brussels wants to mark your budget before your parliament sees it
On 30 June the Commission published "Enhancing economic policy coordination", the document that grew into the European Semester. The plan was simple enough to alarm anyone who believes a national budget belongs to a national parliament: member states would submit their draft budgets to Brussels and the other finance ministers for inspection, with guidelines attached, before the elected representatives at home got to vote on them. Sanctions for the disobedient, including deposits that turn into fines, would be deemed adopted unless a qualified majority of the Council bothered to overturn them. A debt crisis caused in no small part by the euro was thus repurposed, with admirable economy, into a reason to take budget-making away from the people who pay for it.
→ eur-lex.europa.eu → ec.europa.eu
1. Your bank records, posted to Washington
On 28 June the EU signed the new SWIFT agreement handing the United States Treasury bulk access to European bank transfer data, a deal Parliament had thrown out in February. The European Data Protection Supervisor objected to the bulk transfers and to how long the data would sit unexamined in American hands. Nothing reassures a citizen quite like being told the mass data grab now comes with European oversight.
2. The Commission warms to body scanners
On 15 June the Commission issued its communication on the use of security scanners at EU airports, gently shepherding the naked-image machines back onto the agenda after Parliament had objected on privacy grounds. The technology that strips you to your outline at the gate was rebranded, as ever, as a service to your safety.
3. A new EU-wide tax, taken on tour to Toronto
EU leaders agreed on 17 June to push a system of bank levies, then carried the begging bowl to the G20 in Toronto on 26 and 27 June. The world declined to play along, so on 28 June the Commission announced it would study whether the EU should impose a financial transactions tax on its own. A levy nobody else wants is, naturally, a levy Brussels must therefore have.
4. Paying Colonel Gaddafi to be Europe's bouncer
In June the Commission and Libya signed a memorandum of understanding on migration cooperation, the opening move in a relationship that would see tens of millions of euros offered to Tripoli to stop people reaching Europe. The Union that lectures the world on human rights had found a most discreet partner in Colonel Gaddafi.
5. Come on in, the water is lovely
On 17 June the European Council opened accession negotiations with Iceland, a country whose banks had just detonated and whose voters were far from sold on the idea. Mid-crisis, with the euro smouldering, the answer was once again to grow the club rather than mend it.
6. Another passenger boards the euro
On 8 June EU finance ministers cleared Estonia to adopt the euro on 1 January 2011. As Greece burned and bailout funds were being assembled, Brussels celebrated by adding a new member to the very currency union it was struggling to hold together.
7. Europe 2020, the strategy to end all strategies
On 17 June the European Council adopted Europe 2020, a fresh set of five headline targets to deliver smart, sustainable and inclusive growth by the end of the decade. It replaced the Lisbon Strategy, whose own targets had been quietly missed, proving that the one EU growth target never in doubt is the production of new growth targets.
8. Van Rompuy demands more economic governance
Throughout June the Council president pressed his task force on economic governance for the eurozone, with closer coordination, tighter budget surveillance and a fresh menu of sanctions, reporting progress to the June European Council. The remedy for a crisis of overcentralised currency was, he had concluded, a great deal more centralisation.
→ cvce.eu
9. The 75-watt bulb is sentenced
Under the phase-out timetable, September 2010 was set to switch off the 75-watt incandescent bulb across the Union, the next instalment of the ban begun the previous autumn. Brussels could not save a currency, but it could at least decide what light you were permitted to read about it by.
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