Eurobloat #0051 • July 2014
July 2014 was a busy month for a Union that cannot govern itself but is certain it can govern everything else. It elected a president nobody had voted for, fined a drug company, redrew the rules for your rubbish and lectured the member states on their light bulbs, all before the summer recess.
Folly of the Month: The Parliament crowns a president, and calls it democracy
On 15 July the European Parliament elected Jean-Claude Juncker as Commission President, 422 votes in favour against 250, and announced this as a triumph of accountability. The trick is the word "elected". Voters across twenty-eight countries had cast no ballot with Mr Juncker's name on it, yet through the Spitzenkandidat sleight of hand the Parliament dressed up a backroom carve-up as the popular will, then dared the European Council to refuse it. Two governments did vote against the nomination in June, which in Brussels counts as a rounding error, and the man who once said that when it becomes serious you have to lie was duly installed for five years.
1. Servier handed a 427 million euro bill for the crime of settling a patent dispute
On 9 July the Commission fined the French firm Servier and five generics makers a combined 427.7 million euros for so-called pay-for-delay deals over the blood-pressure drug perindopril. Brussels, which produces nothing and patents nothing, has decided it knows better than the companies that do how patent litigation ought to be concluded, and will help itself to a few hundred million when it disagrees.
2. The bin directive: Brussels reaches into your dustbin
On 2 July the outgoing Commission tabled its circular economy package, COM(2014) 398, complete with a 70 per cent municipal recycling target by 2030, an 80 per cent packaging target and landfill bans on metal, glass, paper and plastic. Having run out of larger things to centralise, the Union turned to the contents of the household rubbish bag, then watched the incoming Commission quietly bin the lot a few months later.
3. The vacuum cleaner countdown begins
From 1 September 2014 any vacuum cleaner rated at 1,600 watts or more would be banned from the EU market, a deadline set in July's run-up and hailed as a victory for the planet. A machine of 1,599 watts remained virtuous, 1,600 watts became contraband, and the citizen learned once again that the precise wattage of his carpet cleaner is a matter for officials in Brussels rather than for him.
4. A 30 per cent energy savings target, decided for you in advance
On 23 July the Commission recommended a 30 per cent energy efficiency target for 2030 in a communication grandly titled on energy security and the 2030 framework. It thoughtfully declined to say whether the figure should be binding, leaving that to national leaders in October, having first established the number as the only respectable one to choose. This is what passes for handing power back: Brussels picks the target, the capitals are invited to agree.
5. 150,000 people tell the Commission to drop ISDS, so it carries on regardless
The Commission's public consultation on investor-state dispute settlement in the TTIP talks closed on 14 July, having attracted nearly 150,000 submissions, the overwhelming majority hostile. The catch, which the Commission stated plainly, was that the consultation was never about whether ISDS should exist, only how it should be dressed. Asking the public a question while ruling out the answer they keep giving is the Brussels method in miniature.
6. The Court tells the Council to stop hiding its homework
On 3 July, in Case C-350/12 P, the Court of Justice ruled against the Council in the long fight by MEP Sophie in 't Veld for access to legal advice on the EU-US data agreement. It took five years and a top-court judgment to extract a single document the institutions had simply preferred to keep secret, which tells you most of what you need to know about Brussels and transparency.
7. Sectoral sanctions on Russia, written so existing contracts could carry on
On 31 July the Council adopted its tier-three sanctions on Russia, an arms embargo, dual-use export curbs and limits on capital markets and oil technology. The arms embargo was carefully drafted to spare contracts agreed before 1 August, which is how France kept building warships for Moscow while the Union congratulated itself on its resolve. A common foreign policy that exempts the deals already signed is not much of a policy.
8. The Parliament demands solidarity, and a bigger budget for it
At the 14-17 July plenary MEPs debated Ukraine and the Gaza fighting and, alongside the usual resolutions, raised the alarm about budget shortfalls for Ukraine, Syrian refugees and assorted foreign-policy instruments. The reflex in Brussels is unfailing: every crisis abroad is, on inspection, an argument for more money and more competence to be sent to Brussels.
9. The schoolmaster issues the term's detentions
July brought the Commission's monthly infringements package, the ritual in which Brussels grades the member states on their copying-out of EU law and refers the laggards to the Court of Justice. The exercise casts twenty-eight elected governments as errant pupils and the unelected Commission as the headmaster with the cane, which is precisely the relationship the treaties were sold as not creating.
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