Eurobloat #0049 • May 2014
May 2014 gave us a court that decided memory itself was a regulated activity, an election the EU lost and ignored, and a directive that came to save us from our own electronic cigarettes. Order, as ever, restored.
Folly of the Month: The right to delete the past
On 13 May the Court of Justice handed down its Google Spain judgment and conjured a brand new fundamental right out of a 1995 directive: the right to be forgotten. A Spanish man objected that searching his name surfaced a genuine, lawfully published newspaper notice about his old debts, so the Court ruled that a search engine must, on request, scrub the link. The newspaper article stays up, the fact remains true, but Brussels now appoints a private American company as the continent's censor of inconvenient history, with no court, no hearing and no appeal for the public whose access is quietly trimmed. It is hard to imagine a more flattering monument to the EU than a machine for making awkward facts disappear.
→ en.wikipedia.org → eur-lex.europa.eu
1. The voters answered, and were overruled
Between 22 and 25 May the citizens of 28 states turned out in record-low numbers, 42.54 per cent, to elect a parliament most of them cannot name, and rewarded eurosceptics across the continent. In Britain UKIP topped a national poll, the first time in over a century that neither Labour nor the Conservatives had won. The lesson Brussels drew was that it simply needed to explain itself better.
2. Saving you from your own e-cigarette
The Tobacco Products Directive entered into force on 19 May, bringing combined picture-and-text warnings sprawled across 65 per cent of every pack and, for good measure, EU-wide rules capping the nicotine strength and tank size of electronic cigarettes. A device that helps smokers quit was duly folded into the same regime as the thing it replaces, because nothing escapes the directive that cannot be measured, labelled and limited.
3. One more layer for failing banks
On 21 May twenty-six member states signed the intergovernmental agreement underpinning the Single Resolution Mechanism, a new central authority to wind up failing banks and a fund the rest of us guarantee. Britain and Sweden declined to sign. The cure for a debt crisis caused by too much pooled risk was, naturally, a fresh institution for pooling risk.
4. A loving essay about the flag
With the EU haemorrhaging support at the ballot box, the Parliament's own research service marked 21 May with a tender history of the twelve gold stars on a blue field, recounting the design competition that was announced and then never actually held. When trust is collapsing, the obvious response is a fond meditation on your own bunting.
5. Marching season at Schuman
Europe Day arrived on 9 May, the annual festival of open-day buildings, free flags and self-congratulation commemorating the 1950 Schuman Declaration. The celebrations landed days before an election in which the public conspicuously failed to celebrate. The party went ahead regardless.
6. The forecast that was always strengthening
In early May the Commission published its Spring forecast, assuring everyone that the outlook was strengthening and a sustained recovery on its way, while playing down any risk of euro-area deflation, the prospect of which it judged to be low. The southern economies on the receiving end of austerity were, presumably, reassured. The forecast was strengthening; it is always strengthening.
7. Brussels grades the homework
Hard on the forecast came the European Semester, the annual ritual in which the Commission marks the budgets and reforms of member states and hands each one its corrections. Elected governments submit their tax and spending plans to be graded by officials nobody chose. The schoolmaster, freshly rebuked at the polls, kept right on issuing report cards.
→ reforms-investments.ec.europa.eu
8. Switzerland says no, Brussels sulks
Switzerland had voted in February to curb mass immigration, and through the spring of 2014 Brussels punished the heresy by stalling its participation in research programmes and refusing to let Bern sign the deal extending free movement to Croatia. A democratic vote to control one's own borders was treated as a fault to be corrected rather than a choice to be respected.
9. The roaming promise the Council quietly throttled
Parliament had grandly voted to abolish mobile roaming charges, but by spring the proposal was bogged down in the Council, where ministers picked apart the specifics and the abolition date drifted off into the future. The headline came years before the substance, which is generally how the favours work. The press release, at least, was instant.
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