Eurobloat #0013 • May 2011
May 2011 was the month Denmark put a few officers back on its own frontier and the Commission reacted as though the building were on fire. Elsewhere a third country was bailed out, a perfectly innocent cucumber was hanged in the public square, and every website on the continent was ordered to ask your permission before remembering you.
Folly of the Month: A nation guards its own border, so Brussels invents a clause to take the decision away
On 4 May 2011 the Commission unveiled its Communication on Migration, the centrepiece of which was a proposal for a Union-level mechanism allowing a decision at European level on which member states could exceptionally reintroduce internal border controls, paired with a Community-based Schengen evaluation mechanism (COM(2011) 248). The practical effect was to move the decision on reintroducing internal border controls away from national capitals and towards Brussels. The trigger was Denmark announcing it would put customs officers back on its borders with Germany and Sweden, and Italy and France squabbling over what to do with the migrants arriving from Tunisia. The logical response to a system that cannot control its external frontier might be to let members defend their own. The Commission's response was instead to propose that members should need its permission to do so. Sovereignty, it turns out, is a shortcoming to be followed up by experts.
1. Denmark puts officers back on its border, Brussels is appalled
On 11 May 2011 Copenhagen agreed to reintroduce permanent controls at its German and Swedish frontiers, hours before an emergency EU meeting on immigration and Schengen. The Commission and Berlin lined up to condemn a country for the radical act of inspecting who crosses into it.
2. The third bailout in eighteen months
On 16 May 2011 eurozone ministers signed off a 78 billion euro rescue for Portugal, the third country after Greece and Ireland to be placed under the care of the Commission, the ECB and the IMF. A currency union with no exit, no border and no brakes was discovering that its only available gear was reverse, paid for by everyone else.
3. The Spanish cucumber, convicted without trial
On 26 May 2011 German health officials publicly blamed Spanish cucumbers for a deadly E. coli outbreak; the actual culprit turned out to be sprouts grown in Germany. Spanish growers lost an estimated 200 million euros a week, after which the EU food-safety machine, having helped destroy the market, generously offered to compensate the victims with everyone's money.
4. You must now consent to a cookie
From 26 May 2011 the e-Privacy Directive required every website to obtain your prior consent before storing a cookie, the headline achievement of which has been a decade of pop-up banners that everyone clicks away without reading. Brussels set out to protect your privacy and succeeded only in training the entire continent to agree to anything to make the box disappear.
5. Brussels decides it needs its own prosecutor
On 26 May 2011 the Commission published a communication on protecting the European Union's financial interests by criminal law (COM(2011) 293), floating a European Public Prosecutor's Office with powers to investigate and prosecute across the member states. Faced with its own money being misspent, the Commission concluded that the remedy was not to spend less but to acquire a prosecutor of its very own.
6. The data-retention watchdog tells the Commission to show its evidence
On 31 May 2011 the European Data Protection Supervisor issued a formal opinion warning that the Commission had failed to demonstrate the necessity of blanket data retention and should stop asking citizens to hand over their communications records on faith. The Commission spent three years ignoring the warning before the Court eventually struck the whole directive down, which is the EU's preferred method of accountability: none.
7. A single market for somebody else's copyright
On 24 May 2011 the Commission unveiled "A Single Market for Intellectual Property Rights" (COM(2011) 287), a blueprint to harmonise copyright across the continent and to build pan-European machinery for collecting licence fees. The plan to sweep twenty-seven national copyright systems into one Brussels framework is the same instinct that gave us the rest of this list, dressed up as a favour to inventors.
8. The grubby end of the open-borders panic
On 24 May 2011 the Commission proposed in COM(2011) 292 to start "dialogues for migration, mobility and security" with Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt, the diplomatic phrase for paying neighbouring governments to keep people on their side of the sea. Having insisted that borders within Europe must stay open, Brussels found itself outsourcing the borders it could not police to whichever regime would take the cheque.
9. A detergent fine still drying on the line
The Commission's 315.2 million euro cartel fine against the makers of washing powder, handed down in mid-April, was still the talk of Brussels through May 2011 as the largest consumer-goods penalty of its kind. The competition directorate found a price-fixing ring, declared victory, and pocketed a sum that went not to the shoppers who overpaid but into the EU budget.
Enjoyed this post?
Well, you could share the post with others, follow me with RSS Feeds and/or send me a comment via email.
Tags
Category:
Year: