Eurobloat #0022 • February 2012
February gave us a treaty nobody would defend, a bailout nobody believed, half a trillion euros conjured out of the air, and a new Commission report grading the homework of twelve member states. Spring is in the air, and so is the smell of fresh red tape.
Folly of the Month: ACTA, signed first and read later
Having quietly signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a sweeping treaty on internet enforcement negotiated behind closed doors, the Commission watched in horror as the public found out what was in it. So on 22 February, Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht did what any confident salesman does when the customers revolt: he asked the Court of Justice to rule on whether his own treaty was even legal. Sign the thing, sell it to twenty-two member states, then turn to the judges and ask whether it breaches fundamental rights. A masterclass in doing everything in the wrong order, dressed up as caution.
1. Two hundred cities said no in the street
On 11 February, protesters in some two hundred cities across more than twenty countries marched against ACTA, with around a hundred thousand on the streets in Germany alone. When citizens have to fill the squares of Europe to find out what their governments signed on their behalf, the transparency the EU forever lectures others about is plainly running on empty.
→ edri.org
2. The court that quietly told Brussels no
On 16 February the Court of Justice ruled in SABAM v Netlog that a social network cannot be ordered to install a permanent system filtering everything its users post. For once a genuinely good outcome: general surveillance of citizens to hunt for copyright slipped past, struck down on the grounds of privacy and free expression. Remember this ruling the next time Brussels proposes scanning your every message for its own good.
→ eff.org
3. A second Greek bailout, same as the first
On 21 February the Eurogroup emerged after more than thirteen hours of talks to announce a second rescue for Greece worth 130 billion euros, complete with a haircut for private bondholders and a thick book of conditions written in Brussels. The cure for a debt crisis caused by lending too much, it turns out, is to lend a great deal more and run the country by remote control.
4. The Commission marks the class register
On 14 February the Commission published its first Alert Mechanism Report and announced in-depth reviews of twelve member states, the United Kingdom among them, for the new sin of macroeconomic imbalance. Brussels has appointed itself headmaster, and twelve capitals have been told to stay behind after class while their economies are inspected for untidiness.
5. Half a trillion euros, freshly printed
On 29 February the European Central Bank handed 800 banks a further 529.5 billion euros in cheap three-year loans, the second helping of its long-term refinancing operation. Nothing steadies a continent quite like flooding the banks with money at one per cent and hoping the bill arrives after everyone responsible has retired.
6. Strasbourg grades a member state
On 16 February the Parliament adopted a resolution on Hungary and floated the possibility of the Article 7 procedure, the EU's mechanism for putting a national government in the corner. Whatever one thinks of Budapest, the spectacle of an unelected chamber appointing itself judge of an elected national parliament tells you exactly where power is meant to flow.
7. Reding's data empire takes shape
Fresh from unveiling her sprawling new Data Protection Regulation in late January, Commissioner Viviane Reding spent February selling a single rulebook for all twenty-seven states, complete with fines of up to two per cent of global turnover. A grand harmonisation, which is the polite word for taking the rules out of national hands and posting them to Brussels.
8. The fiscal compact, ready for signing
February was spent polishing the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance, the so-called fiscal compact, finalised at the end of January and signed on 2 March by every member state except Britain and the Czech Republic. London declined to hand Brussels a veto over its own budget, and was duly tutted at for the offence of guarding its own purse.
9. Free food, courtesy of the common agricultural policy
On 15 February the Parliament approved continuing the scheme handing out roughly 500 million euros a year in food aid to the most deprived, money drawn from the farm budget. A policy that pays farmers to produce surpluses, then spends more shifting those surpluses to the people the same prices helped to impoverish, is the circular logic of Brussels in one tidy parcel.
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