Eurobloat #0044 • December 2013
December is the season of goodwill, so Brussels gave itself a 960 billion euro present, a brand new bank-resolution bureaucracy, and a defence summit at which nobody defended anything. The citizens got a lawyer telling them their phone records had been stored illegally for seven years.
Folly of the Month: A Single Resolution Mechanism nobody can read
On 18 December 2013 finance ministers stayed up all night to bolt together the Single Resolution Mechanism, a scheme to wind up failing eurozone banks from the centre rather than from the capitals that actually elect governments. The decision-making chart is so labyrinthine that even the President of the European Parliament complained the process was too complex to work in a real crisis. A fund banks would top up to 55 billion euros by 2024 sounds prudent until you ask which taxpayers stand behind it during the years it sits nearly empty. The cure for a crisis caused by too much centralised cleverness was, naturally, more centralised cleverness.
1. Eight banks fined 1.71 billion euros, and the regulators take a bow
On 4 December the Commission handed down a record 1.71 billion euro penalty over interest-rate cartels, with Deutsche Bank alone billed 725 million. Punishing rigged markets is fair enough, but watching Brussels present itself as the stern sheriff of finance, weeks before it announced it would also be running the banks' funerals, was a study in a single institution marking its own homework.
2. A 960 billion euro budget, signed off by an A-point
On 2 December the Council quietly adopted the 2014 to 2020 multiannual budget, 960 billion euros in commitments, nodded through as a formality at the Competitiveness Council. Seven years of spending the size of a medium economy, waved past with the procedural ceremony usually reserved for approving the minutes of the last meeting.
3. The EU's own lawyer admits the surveillance was illegal
On 12 December the Court's Advocate General concluded that the Data Retention Directive, which forced telecoms firms to hoard everyone's call and location data for up to two years, breached the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Brussels had spent seven years insisting that logging the movements of half a billion innocent people was perfectly proportionate. It took its own in-house lawyer to point out that reconstructing a citizen's entire life from their metadata is, in fact, a serious intrusion.
4. Open borders by calendar appointment
The transitional limits on Bulgarian and Romanian workers expired on 31 December, lifted not because any member state judged the moment right but because a treaty clock said seven years were up. Free movement that arrives by automatic timer, regardless of what national labour markets or voters think, is the EU project in miniature: the schedule decides, the people are informed.
5. The Tobacco Products Directive: Brussels eyes your vaping
On 18 December the institutions struck a backroom deal on the Tobacco Products Directive, bringing e-cigarettes under EU rules for the first time. The Commission had wanted every vape regulated as a medicine; that was beaten back, which is the only cheering part. The rest is Brussels deciding it must have an opinion on a product that helps people quit the very habit it spends millions lecturing them about.
→ epha.org
6. A defence summit that deployed only communiques
On 19 and 20 December EU leaders held their first defence discussion in five years and emerged with conclusions about a more integrated defence industrial base, deployable battle groups and synergies. The battle groups have existed for years and have never once been deployed. The summit's chief output was the announcement that there should, in future, be more output.
7. The Mediterranean task force reports back with a wish list
On 4 December the Commission published its Task Force Mediterranean report, the official answer to the Lampedusa drownings. Its recommendations spanned resettlement, returns, border reinforcement and "exploring" legal routes, in other words every contradictory instinct at once. Months of meetings produced a document that pointed in all directions and committed to none.
8. Lecturing Kyiv after losing Kyiv
On 12 December Parliament passed a resolution on the Vilnius summit, where Ukraine had just walked away from the EU's association agreement and into Moscow's arms. Brussels had insisted on the release of one jailed politician as the price of partnership, held the line, and watched the whole prize slip to Russia. The resolution that followed was the diplomatic equivalent of a sternly worded letter sent after the burglars had left.
9. The bottom-trawling ban that scraped the bottom
On 10 December MEPs in Strasbourg rejected an outright ban on deep-sea bottom trawling by 342 votes to 326, opting instead for a compromise to regulate it. The sponsor blamed intense lobbying for the defeat. A sixteen-vote margin, after years of process, is what passes in this Parliament for decisive environmental leadership.
→ phys.org
Enjoyed this post?
Well, you could share the post with others, follow me with RSS Feeds and/or send me a comment via email.
Tags
Category:
Year: