Eurobloat #0045 • January 2014
A new year, a new Greek presidency, and the usual Brussels resolution to do more of everything. January 2014 brought open borders, climate homework set a decade in advance, and a stern memo to one member state for the crime of selling the very citizenship the EU itself dispenses for free.
Folly of the Month: The EU sells citizenship, then scolds the member that charges for it
On 16 January the European Parliament passed a resolution titled "EU citizenship for sale", aimed squarely at Malta, which had decided to hand passports to wealthy foreigners for roughly 650,000 euros each. The objection was not that a sovereign island was auctioning off its own nationality, but that a Maltese passport is also an EU passport, so Brussels felt the buyers were really purchasing its product without its permission. The Parliament demanded that citizenship be tied to a "genuine link" to the country, a standard the Union conspicuously declines to apply to the free movement it grants across twenty-eight states. The lesson: citizenship of the Union is priceless, unless a member state names a price, in which case it becomes a scandal.
1. Borders open on schedule, hysteria optional
On 1 January the last work restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian nationals lapsed across the remaining nine member states, including Britain, opening every labour market in the Union. The Commission marked the moment with a soothing statement insisting there was nothing to see, while national governments quietly scrambled to rewrite their benefit rules around a policy they were given no say over.
2. The 2030 climate framework, or homework due in sixteen years
On 22 January the Commission unveiled its 2030 climate and energy framework, complete with a binding 40 percent emissions cut and an EU-wide renewables target of "at least 27 percent". Setting yourself goals for the next decade is a fine way to look busy while leaving the awkward part, namely paying for it, to whoever holds office long after you have moved on.
3. An "industrial renaissance" declared by the people who taxed industry
The same day, the Commission published "For a European Industrial Renaissance", lamenting that manufacturing had slid to about 15 percent of GDP and urging it back up to 20 percent by 2020. There is something bracing about Brussels diagnosing European industrial decline without once glancing at the energy bills, the labelling rules and the directives it had spent years stacking on top of that industry.
4. Deciding which banks are allowed to be too big to fail
On 29 January the Commission proposed its Bank Structural Reform, banning proprietary trading at the largest banks and threatening to wall off their riskier activities. Four years later, in July 2018, the whole thing was quietly withdrawn, having achieved nothing except a great deal of lobbying and a fresh acronym.
5. Greece takes the wheel of a ship it can barely afford
On 1 January Greece assumed the rotating presidency of the Council, promising to deepen the eurozone and complete the Banking Union. Handing the helm of European economic governance to the country most recently rescued from bankruptcy is the kind of casting decision only Brussels could make with a straight face.
6. The reformed fishing policy that bans throwing fish back
The reformed Common Fisheries Policy entered into force on 1 January, centred on a "landing obligation" forbidding fishermen from discarding unwanted catch at sea. A rule written in Brussels to fix a quota system written in Brussels, phased in slowly enough that nobody responsible would still be in post when the trawlers worked out how to comply.
→ oceans-and-fisheries.ec.europa.eu
7. The vacuum-cleaner wattage cap loads its barrel
January confirmed that from September the Union would outlaw any vacuum cleaner with a motor above 1,600 watts, under regulations adopted in 2013, with a further squeeze to 900 watts pencilled in for 2017. Nothing reassures a continent worried about industrial decline quite like the news that its institutions are hard at work regulating the suction of carpet cleaners.
→ energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu
8. Parliament keeps grading the NSA, and itself
Throughout January the Parliament's civil liberties committee continued grinding through its inquiry into NSA mass surveillance, the work that fed into its March resolution threatening Washington with "consequences". Stout words on snooping from an institution that would spend the following decade drafting its own schemes to scan private messages.
9. The online gambling crackdown lines up age and identity checks
January saw the Commission advancing its work on online gambling that would land in July as a recommendation pressing member states to impose age-verification and identity checks on players. A familiar pattern: a worthy aim about protecting children, used to normalise the idea that every adult must prove who they are before being allowed online.
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