Eurobloat #0015 • July 2011
July opened with Poland taking the wheel, a fresh bailout summit, and a Commission that decided the answer to a debt crisis was to design itself some brand new taxes. Between the sermons there was still time to standardise your dinner plate and your phone bill.
Folly of the Month: A second Greek rescue, because the first one worked so well
On 21 July the seventeen euro-area leaders gathered in Brussels and agreed a second package for Greece worth around 109 billion euros, channelled through the European Financial Stability Facility, with loan maturities stretched and rates cut. They also unveiled the magic phrase "private sector involvement", which is the polite way of telling bondholders to take a haircut they were assured was voluntary. The first bailout, barely a year old, had not fixed anything, so the cure was simply a larger version of the same medicine. Nobody in the room was asked to explain why the single currency keeps requiring rescues that get bigger each time.
1. The Commission would like its own taxes now
Fresh from the bailout, the Commission's 2014 to 2020 budget plan, unveiled on 29 June and chewed over through July, proposed a financial transaction tax and a slice of VAT as "own resources", so that Brussels could raise money directly rather than asking member states. A debt crisis is apparently the ideal moment to give the centre its own revenue stream and shrink the bit national parliaments control.
2. Poland takes the wheel of the travelling presidency
On 1 July Poland assumed the rotating presidency, promising growth, openness and security. Every six months a new capital inherits the same in-tray, restates the same priorities and discovers the same euro crisis waiting on the desk.
3. Your phone bill, now centrally planned
On 6 July the Commission proposed yet another roaming regulation, with new retail and wholesale price caps to arrive in 2012. Brussels having spent years legislating roaming prices, the solution to the prices it set was, naturally, to legislate them again.
4. The court hands monitoring duties to the marketplace
On 12 July the Court of Justice ruled in L'Oreal v eBay that an online marketplace can be liable for what its sellers post and may be ordered to police future infringements. A useful precedent for anyone who believes the platforms, rather than the actual wrongdoers, should be made the unpaid traffic wardens of the internet.
5. The label that took most of a decade
On 6 July Parliament adopted the Food Information to Consumers rules, mandating energy, fat, sugar and salt figures per 100 grams in a prescribed format. Years of negotiation, repealed directives by the handful, all so the back of a yoghurt pot could be standardised across a continent.
6. Banks get the Basel rulebook, EU edition
On 20 July the Commission published its CRD IV and CRR package, turning the global Basel III accord into directly applicable EU law for every bank and investment firm. A single rulebook written in Brussels, because trusting national supervisors to supervise their own banks is clearly the part that went wrong.
7. Members may ban a crop, with permission
On 5 July Parliament backed letting member states restrict or prohibit GM cultivation on their own soil. Returning a decision to national capitals is welcome, yet even Greenpeace called the deal a trap, since the price of the opt-out was a tighter EU approval regime that the centre still runs.
8. A consultation that ends with plain packaging
On 27 July the Commission published the results of its tobacco consultation, all 85,000 responses, the opening move towards display bans and standardised packs. The findings, predictably, supported doing the thing the Commission had already decided to do.
9. Enlargement marches on as Croatia clears the gate
With accession talks closed on 30 June, July belonged to the celebrations as Brussels lined up Croatia as its twenty-eighth member, treaty to follow by year end. The euro was visibly failing and the open border was already cracking under pressure from Lampedusa, yet the answer was still more members and more Europe.
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