Eurobloat #0053 • September 2014
A good month for the citizen who dreams small. While the Mediterranean filled with the drowned and a new Commission was assembled to lecture us all, the great minds of Brussels found time to decide precisely how many watts your carpet is permitted.
Folly of the Month: The war on the vacuum cleaner
From 1 September 2014 it became illegal to place a vacuum cleaner of 1,600 watts or more on the EU market. Not 1,601 watts, you understand, but 1,599 is allowed, a distinction of real moral seriousness. Every machine must now carry an A to G energy label, the better to grade you for your domestic sins, and shoppers across the continent responded by panic-buying the powerful models before they vanished onto the black market. A continent that cannot agree a border policy can, it turns out, agree exactly how hard your appliance may suck.
→ energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu
1. Kettles, toasters and hairdryers put on notice
No sooner had the vacuum cleaners fallen than a Commission-backed study identified some thirty further household appliances that "could be restricted", among them high-powered hairdryers, toasters and electric kettles. Brussels insisted nothing had been decided, which is the precise tone in which it announces everything it has decided.
2. A shiny new Commission to think of more things to ban
On 10 September Jean-Claude Juncker unveiled his team of twenty-eight, complete with a "First Vice-President" charged with cutting red tape, a job that exists only because the Commission produces red tape faster than anyone can cut it. The appointment of a dedicated regulation-cutter is the institution conceding, with a straight face, that it cannot stop regulating.
3. The climate job for the man with the oil shares
Among the new commissioners, Juncker handed climate and energy to Miguel Arias Canete, lately the president of two petroleum companies, whose son and brother-in-law remained on their boards. More than half a million people signed a petition against him. Brussels, ever the friend of the small voice, waved him through.
4. Lecturing Scotland on the way out the door
With Scotland voting on 18 September, Commission President Barroso had already warned that an independent Scotland would find joining the EU "extremely difficult, if not impossible", since a single member such as Spain might wield a veto. A union that bills itself as a welcoming family of nations spent the long campaign reminding one of its own that the door only opens inward and on Brussels' terms.
5. The trade deal Brussels postponed to please Moscow
Having signed a grand association agreement with Ukraine, the EU agreed on 12 September to postpone the trade part of it until the end of 2015, after the Kremlin threatened retaliation. So much for the bloc that never bends to bullies: confronted by a hostile regime, it shelved the very agreement it had just trumpeted, and Kyiv was left to wait.
6. Parliament ratifies the deal it then helped freeze
Two days later, on 16 September, the European Parliament theatrically ratified the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement by 535 votes to 127, in lockstep with Kyiv's own parliament. A fine piece of choreography, given the trade chapter had just been quietly parked to spare Moscow's feelings.
7. A new round of sanctions, carefully blunted
On 12 September the EU rolled out fresh sanctions barring long-term financing for Rosneft, Transneft and Gazprom Neft and five state banks. Stern stuff, save for the loopholes preserving every contract signed before the cut-off date, so that Europe's energy giants could keep buying Russian gas while their governments posed for the cameras.
8. The boats kept sinking while Brussels talked
September saw survivors describe a vessel of some five hundred people deliberately sunk by smugglers, one horror among thousands of deaths in a year of them. Italy was left running its own rescue operation almost alone, while the EU prepared a smaller, cheaper border-patrol mission and called the result a collective response. The result of years of incoherent open-borders posturing was a sea full of the dead and a continent arguing over who would pay for the patrol boats.
9. The central bank prints, the saver pays
On 4 September the European Central Bank cut its main rate to 0.05 per cent, pushed the deposit rate to minus 0.20 per cent and announced it would start buying up asset-backed securities. Punishing thrift and rewarding debt, all decided in Frankfurt by men no voter chose and no parliament can sack.
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