Eurobloat #0006 • October 2010
October was the month the great euro rescue was settled by two heads of government strolling along a beach, after which everyone else was informed of the result. The Parliament, meanwhile, demanded a larger budget and the right to raise its own money, because nothing soothes a debt crisis like a continental institution dreaming up new taxes.
Folly of the Month: Two leaders reopen the treaty over lunch in Deauville
On 18 October the German Chancellor and the French President met at the seaside resort of Deauville and emerged having agreed, between themselves, to reopen the Lisbon Treaty and rewrite the eurozone rulebook, including a plan to strip errant members of their voting rights. The other twenty-five governments, the Commission and the Parliament were not in the room, and most heard about their own future second-hand. By the European Council of 28 and 29 October this stitch-up had become official policy, with leaders agreeing to amend the Treaty to build a permanent bailout mechanism for the single currency they had promised would never need one. The lesson of the crisis, apparently, was that the answer to a centralisation that failed is a larger centralisation, decided by fewer people.
→ voxeurop.eu → eur-lex.europa.eu
1. The Parliament wants its own taxes
On 20 October, mid-debt-crisis, MEPs voted at first reading on the 2011 budget and, having dressed it up as a modest 0.8 per cent rise in commitments over 2010, used the occasion to demand negotiations on new "own resources", which is the polite term for letting Brussels levy its own taxes rather than asking member states for the money. Belt-tightening, it seems, comes with a side order of fresh revenue streams for the centre.
2. A tax on every trade, drafted while the banks were still smoking
On 7 October the Commission published a Communication on taxation of the financial sector, floating an EU-wide financial transaction tax. The cure for a crisis caused by Brussels-blessed integration was, naturally, a brand new Brussels-level tax, payable into the Brussels budget.
3. Twenty weeks of maternity leave, billed to the member states
On 20 October the Parliament voted to push minimum maternity leave to 20 weeks on full pay, going beyond even the Commission's own proposal. The instinct is generous; the method is to mandate a costly entitlement from the centre and post the invoice to national treasuries already buried in debt, which is why the Council quietly refused to swallow it.
4. Fifty new proposals to "relaunch" the single market
On 27 October the Commission unveiled "Towards a Single Market Act", a tidy fifty proposals to fix the single market it has spent decades cluttering. The promised reward was 4 per cent of extra GDP over ten years, a figure with all the precision of a man guessing his own weight.
5. An "integrated industrial policy" for the globalisation era
On 28 October the Commission issued a Communication promising an integrated industrial policy to make Europe competitive. The continent that taxes, regulates and harmonises its industries into the ground announced that the solution was a continent-wide plan, written in Brussels, to do more of the same.
6. Border guards rush to Greece as the open frontier buckles
On 24 October Greece asked for emergency help and Frontex deployed its Rapid Border Intervention Teams for the first time ever, sending 175 guards to the Evros river where most of the EU's illegal crossings were pouring through. Years of preaching open borders ended with the bloc scrambling armed teams to a single overrun frontier, while the Dublin asylum system it built quietly collapsed under its own weight.
7. The Commission would like a word about your cows
On 19 October the Commission proposed a temporary five-year suspension of animal cloning for food production, complete with a traceability scheme for imported clone semen and embryos. Whatever one thinks of cloned livestock, the spectacle of Brussels appointing itself registrar of bovine reproductive material is the nanny state lowing for ever more to supervise.
8. The 2011 work programme, or more of everything
Also on 27 October the Commission published its work programme for 2011, a thick catalogue of fresh initiatives, communications and directives. A debt-stricken continent crying out for less was promised, on schedule, a great deal more.
9. New VAT rules to police a tax Brussels never collects
On 7 October the Council adopted Regulation 904/2010 on administrative cooperation and fighting fraud in the field of VAT, expanding cross-border data-sharing between national tax authorities. The bloc does not raise VAT itself, yet it cheerfully writes the rulebook obliging member states to share their citizens' tax records with one another.
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