Eurobloat #0021 • January 2012
A new year, a new resolve to do more Europe. The Union greeted January by signing a treaty its own rapporteur called a masquerade, writing fiscal rules into other people's constitutions, and billing airlines for the air above Beijing.
Folly of the Month: A copyright treaty signed in the dark, in Tokyo
On 26 January the EU and twenty-two of its member states signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in Tokyo, an opaque treaty negotiated for years behind closed doors and promising internet filtering, intermediary liability and a general nudge towards policing what citizens upload. It was so well thought through that Kader Arif, the European Parliament's own rapporteur for the thing, resigned on the spot, declaring he would not take part in this masquerade. Tens of thousands then poured into the streets across Europe, which is rarely the reaction to a treaty Brussels insists everyone wanted. The Parliament would eventually bury it in July, but in January the Commission was still pretending the public simply did not understand.
1. The fiscal compact, or your constitution, redrafted in Brussels
On 30 January, twenty-five leaders endorsed the fiscal compact, which compels members to write a balanced budget rule into national law, preferably the constitution, and submit to correction from the centre. The genius of the scheme is that it dresses central control as discipline. Britain and the Czech Republic declined to sign, and the sky did not fall on either.
2. One ring to rule all your data
On 25 January the Commission unveiled its data protection regulation, a single EU-wide rulebook with a one-stop shop, sold by Viviane Reding as the cure for twenty-seven national laws Brussels never much liked. Harmonisation here means one authority, one regime, one place to lobby, and one more competence pulled up from the member states. The right to be forgotten arrived; the right of nations to set their own rules quietly did not.
3. Brussels grades Hungary, on an accelerated timetable
On 17 January the Commission opened accelerated infringement proceedings against Hungary over its central bank, its data protection office and its judges, giving Budapest a single month to answer rather than the usual leisurely span. The Commission as headmaster, red pen in hand, summoning a member state to explain its own laws. Whatever one makes of Hungary, the spectacle of Brussels marking a nation's homework is the future the founders promised.
4. The bailout fund loses the rating it was built on
On 13 January Standard and Poor's stripped France and Austria of their AAA ratings, and on 16 January it duly downgraded the EFSF, the rescue fund whose whole promise rested on those guarantors. A fund insured by the creditworthiness of countries that had just lost their creditworthiness. The officials downplayed it, as officials do when the scaffolding wobbles.
5. A new President for the Parliament nobody elected to that job
On 17 January MEPs chose Martin Schulz as President of the European Parliament, 387 votes from those cast, and he promptly declared the chamber the place where the interests of the people are defended. The people, of course, were not consulted on the choice, the post being handed round the larger groups by arrangement. Defending the people works best when they are kept at a comfortable distance.
6. The EU decides it may tax the air over China
From 1 January every flight to, from or within the EU was dragged into the Emissions Trading System, including the long stretches over countries that never agreed to it. China blocked some four billion dollars of Airbus orders, the United States legislated to forbid its carriers from complying, and Brussels discovered that taxing other people's airspace invites a trade war. The scheme would later be quietly paused, the clock stopped, the ambition unmentioned.
7. An oil embargo, timed around the friends it would hurt
On 23 January the Council banned imports of Iranian crude, with existing contracts allowed to run to July so that Greece, Italy and Spain could find oil elsewhere first. A sanction so robust it had to be phased in gently to spare the members already on the floor. The same Union that lectures on resolve wrote the exemptions into the press release.
8. Croatia votes to join, while most of Croatia stays home
On 22 January Croatians backed EU membership by 66 percent, on a turnout of 43.5 percent, which means roughly three voters in ten actively endorsed accession. The Union called it a ringing mandate to become the twenty-eighth member. A club so popular that the majority of the joining country could not be moved to vote on joining it.
9. An informal summit issues a statement about growth
On 30 January the leaders gathered informally, agreed that growth and jobs were good, and issued a statement on growth-friendly consolidation while promising youth guarantees and the redeployment of money already budgeted. The cure for a crisis the centre helped engineer turned out to be more communiqués and a fresh logo for old funds. Nobody who built the burden was asked to account for it.
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