Eurobloat #0032 • December 2012
December 2012 was a busy festive season for the Union. It accepted a peace prize, signed away patent sovereignty, voted for a new tax it cannot collect, and decided the European Central Bank should run the banks of seventeen countries. Season of goodwill, indeed.
Folly of the Month: The largest fine in EU history, for televisions nobody still owns
On 5 December the Commission announced its biggest ever antitrust penalty, 1.47 billion euros, against seven makers of cathode ray tubes, the glass innards of the bulky televisions that had already been carted to the tip by the time the cheque was written. Brussels spent years investigating a cartel in a product the market had cheerfully killed off on its own, then presented the bill as a triumph of consumer protection. The whistleblower walked away with full immunity, the lawyers walked away rich, and the consumer, who had long since bought a flat screen, walked away wondering where 1.47 billion euros actually goes.
1. A single patent, a single court, decided once and for all by Luxembourg
On 11 December Parliament approved the unitary patent and a Unified Patent Court, ending decades of negotiation by the simple method of taking the decision away from national courts and giving it to a new pan-European one. Inventors were promised cheaper paperwork. What they got was another tribunal sitting above their own.
2. The banks of seventeen nations handed to the bank nobody voted for
On 13 December finance ministers agreed the Single Supervisory Mechanism, parking the supervision of the eurozone's banks with the European Central Bank. National regulators, who at least answered to national parliaments, were demoted. The institution that had spent the crisis printing money would now also be marking its own homework.
3. Parliament blesses a tax it has no power to levy
On 12 December the Parliament gave its consent for eleven member states to press ahead with a financial transaction tax under "enhanced cooperation", the polite name for a coalition of the willing on tax. The EU has no power to tax, so it invented a procedure to let a club of governments tax inside it instead, with Brussels holding the rulebook. A levy the City of London never agreed to, designed by people who will never have to collect it.
4. The cure for too much Europe is, naturally, more Europe
Ahead of the December summit, the four presidents produced a roadmap solemnly titled "Towards a Genuine Economic and Monetary Union", proposing a fiscal union, common budgetary controls and yet more central machinery. The diagnosis was that the euro had been half-built. The prescription was to build the other half on top of the same foundations that had just cracked.
5. A 132.8 billion euro budget, voted through on time for once
On 12 December Parliament rubber-stamped the 2013 budget, 132.8 billion euros in payments, having first squeezed a top-up out of member states to cover the bills the previous budget could not pay. The same institution preaching austerity to Athens and Madrid had quietly run out of money itself. Christmas came early for the gravy train.
6. Equality arrives, and your insurance gets dearer
From 21 December insurers were forbidden from pricing on the basis of sex, the deadline set by the Court of Justice when it struck down the very exemption the legislators had written. Safer female drivers and longer-lived women now subsidise the rest, all in the name of a charter article. A court decreed equality, and the bill landed on the policyholder's doormat.
7. A peace prize, accepted in person, with the prize money topped up
On 10 December Messrs Van Rompuy and Barroso travelled to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Union, which Mr Van Rompuy modestly called "the biggest peacemaking institution ever created in world history". The Commission then topped the prize money up to two million euros from its own funds, because nothing says peace like spending other people's money on your own commemoration. Greece, then on its knees, was not asked for its view.
8. Spain's banks bailed out, just in time for the holidays
On 11 December roughly 39.5 billion euros flowed through the European Stability Mechanism into Spain's bank rescue fund, the first big drawdown of the eurozone's new bailout vehicle. The money went to recapitalise Bankia and friends, the very lenders whose property lending had helped blow up the Spanish economy. Privatised profits, mutualised losses, and a continent invited to share the tab.
9. Brussels decides who sits on your company's board
The Commission's proposal to force a 40 per cent quota of women among non-executive directors of listed companies, unveiled by Viviane Reding in November, ground on through December despite member states grumbling that boardroom composition was their own affair. Brussels, having run out of borders to harmonise, moved on to harmonising the seating plan in the directors' suite. Subsidiarity, that fine word, was nowhere to be found.
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