Eurobloat #0011 • March 2011
March was the month the EU decided that the cure for a crisis caused by too much Brussels was, naturally, more Brussels. Member states queued up to hand over their economic homework for marking, while the Court abolished arithmetic and the Commission drew a map of the future with no cars in it.
Folly of the Month: The Euro Plus Pact, or homework for grown-up countries
On 24 and 25 March the European Council unveiled the Euro Plus Pact, a scheme under which national governments would coordinate wages, pensions and tax policy and submit their plans for inspection by the Commission. The phrase used was stronger economic policy coordination for competitiveness and convergence, which is the sort of thing you say when you mean that capitals will now answer to Brussels for decisions their own voters elected them to take. The crisis was caused by a currency union built without the means to enforce its own rules, so the solution was to acquire those means by stealth and call it a pact. The headmaster has decided the pupils need closer supervision, and the headmaster, conveniently, is also the institution that designed the failing curriculum.
→ cvce.eu
1. The Court abolishes the actuary
On 1 March the Court of Justice ruled in the Test-Achats case that insurers may no longer use gender to price premiums, striking down a derogation from the rule of unisex pricing with effect from December 2012. Statistics showing that men and women carry different risks were declared incompatible with equality, which is one way of insisting that reality apologise to the directive. The practical result was that everyone could look forward to paying more, in the name of fairness.
2. No car for you, by order, by 2050
On 28 March the Commission adopted its Transport White Paper, a roadmap of forty initiatives whose stated goal was no more conventionally fuelled cars in cities by 2050, with a halving by 2030. Brussels cannot reliably fix a bridge or audit its own accounts, but it is happy to legislate what you will be permitted to drive four decades hence. The plan is described as a vision, which is the word officials use when they will all be safely retired before anyone checks whether it worked.
3. The hunt for a tax of its very own
At the same summit the European Council asked the Commission to assess a financial transaction tax and, tellingly, to explore its potential to contribute to the EU budget. A levy dressed as a curb on speculation was being eyed as an own resource, meaning money that flows to Brussels without first passing through a national parliament that might say no. Every crisis, it seems, is an opportunity to find the EU a revenue stream that nobody got to vote on.
4. The travelling circus votes for a slightly smaller circus
On 9 March the Parliament voted to scrap one of its monthly Strasbourg sessions by holding two of them within a single week. Faced with the absurdity of dragging a parliament between two cities each month at vast expense, MEPs bravely resolved to keep both buildings but visit the spare one twice as fast. The treaties demand the pilgrimage, so the Parliament cannot simply stop wasting the money; it can only learn to waste it more efficiently.
5. Even Microsoft thinks the Commission should regulate a rival
On 31 March Microsoft lodged a formal antitrust complaint with the Commission against Google, having spent a decade itself in the dock in Brussels. A company that knows precisely how the machine works decided the smart move was to point it at someone else, and Brussels was only too pleased to add another American firm to its caseload. The Commission as the world's hall monitor for search results: a role no voter ever asked it to perform.
→ phys.org
6. Stress tests for reactors, ordered in a panic
After Fukushima the European Council on 24 and 25 March declared that all EU nuclear plants should undergo comprehensive risk and safety assessments, the so-called stress tests. The reflex was sound enough, but the speed with which Brussels reached for a continent-wide review of a competence that largely belongs to member states tells you where the instinct always points. When in doubt, coordinate everything from the centre and announce it from a summit.
7. A common foreign policy that could not agree on anything
The extraordinary summit of 11 March exposed an EU hopelessly split over Libya, with France keen on recognition, Germany firmly against any intervention, and the foreign policy chief reduced to flying off to consult the Arab League. The grand project of speaking to the world with one voice produced, as usual, several voices talking over each other. When the no-fly zone finally came it was the United Nations and a coalition of willing states that acted, not the Union with its bespoke diplomatic service.
8. Open borders meet the boats, and nobody wants to share
As thousands of Tunisians landed on Lampedusa, Italy invoked solidarity and burden-sharing, and the response from its partners was a polite refusal. The borderless utopia works beautifully until the arrivals turn up, at which point every member state rediscovers the merits of the national frontier. Frontex brought forward an operation by four months; the much-trumpeted spirit of solidarity proved rather harder to schedule.
9. A regulation to harmonise the bricks
On 9 March the Parliament and Council adopted Regulation 305/2011 laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products and repealing the old directive. Stone, glass and cement had apparently been crossing borders for centuries without sufficient supervision, so Brussels stepped in with a fresh layer of declarations of performance and CE marking. Somewhere a builder who only wanted to sell a window now has paperwork to read, and a few years hence the Commission will propose to simplify the burden it has just created.
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