Eurobloat #0014 • June 2011
June 2011 was the month the Commission proposed financing itself directly from your wallet, the leaders agreed that closing a border should require Brussels' permission slip, and a Spanish cucumber was tried and convicted before the prosecution had finished reading the charge sheet.
Folly of the Month: The EU asks for its own taxes
On 29 June the Commission unveiled its 2014-2020 budget plan together with a scheme to give the Union "own resources": a financial transaction tax and a slice of VAT, paid not by member states but collected at the European level. The stated aim was to cut national contributions to 40 per cent by 2020, which is a polite way of saying the EU wants its hand in the till directly rather than asking the capitals for an allowance each year. A tax that flows to Brussels without passing through a national parliament is not a simplification. It is the moment the schoolmaster stops asking the parents for lunch money and starts taking it from the children at the gate.
1. Closing your own border now requires Brussels' say-so
At the 23-24 June summit the leaders agreed a "mechanism" for reintroducing internal Schengen controls in exceptional circumstances, and the Commission graciously agreed in principle, on the condition that it alone would oversee when a country may guard its own frontier. A member state worried about who is crossing its border must now apply to the institution that built the open border in the first place.
2. Denmark dares to check its own customs
Copenhagen reintroduced customs and border checks with Germany and Sweden, and the response from Brussels was to investigate whether a sovereign country may inspect goods crossing into its own territory, while some in the Parliament demanded Denmark be cut out of Schengen altogether. A nation guarding its own door was treated as the scandal, rather than the years of pretending doors no longer needed guarding.
3. A continent-wide rulebook for funds nobody had asked for it
On 8 June the Parliament and Council adopted the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive, bringing hedge funds, private equity and the rest under a single EU authorisation regime. The crisis was caused by leveraged banks, so naturally the cure was a thick new compliance manual aimed at the firms that did not cause it, with the City of London told the bill was for its own good.
4. Every pill in Europe gets a barcode
Also on 8 June came the Falsified Medicines Directive, which mandated harmonised safety features and serialisation across the single market to keep counterfeits out of the supply chain. A real problem met the usual EU answer: one continent-wide scheme, one set of obligations bolted onto every pharmacist, and a delegated regulation to fill in the thousands of details later.
5. The cucumber was guilty until proven innocent
As the deadly E. coli outbreak spread, EU and German authorities pointed the finger at Spanish cucumbers, only for investigators to conclude on 24 June that the real culprit was fenugreek sprouts. The accusation cost Spanish growers an estimated 200 million dollars a week, after which the Commission offered farmers 210 million euros in compensation, which is the EU paying twice: once for the damage and once for the apology.
6. Russia bans the lot, and Brussels is shocked
On 2 June Russia banned all raw vegetables from the entire European Union over the E. coli scare, and the Commission denounced the ban as disproportionate and demanded its immediate withdrawal. The Union that lectures the world on proportionate, evidence-based decisions had spent the previous week blaming the wrong vegetable from the wrong country.
7. Galileo trims the overrun it created
On 22 June the Commission announced it had heroically reduced the Galileo cost overrun to 1.4 billion euros, down from 1.9 billion, on a project originally budgeted at 3.4 billion. Saving half a billion sounds impressive until you remember it is half a billion of overspend on a satellite system the EU insisted it could not live without, with nobody held to account for the original sums.
8. The club gets bigger
On 24 June the leaders called for Croatia's accession talks to wrap up by the end of the month, and negotiations duly closed on 30 June. Whatever one thinks of Croatia, the reflex of an institution that answers every difficulty with "more Europe" is to grow, never to shrink.
9. Setting priorities for a subsidy machine
On 23 June the Parliament adopted its position on the Common Agricultural Policy towards 2020, restating its devotion to food security, the environment and a fairer income for farmers. Translated, the largest single line in the budget will keep flowing from Brussels to the countryside, centrally designed and centrally distributed, because the one thing never on the table is letting member states decide how to farm their own fields.
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