Eurobloat #0054 • October 2014
October was the month the Union posted Britain a surprise bill, swore in a Commission assembled by backroom horse-trade, and set itself binding targets that only Brussels gets to grade. A productive month, then, if you measure productivity in invoices and sermons.
Folly of the Month: A 1.7 billion pound bill, please, by 1 December
The European Commission worked out that Britain had been quietly prosperous for years, recalculated the national income figures to include the cash value of drugs and prostitution, and presented London with a 1.7 billion pound surcharge due within five weeks. France, by the same magical accounting, was handed a refund. Nothing concentrates the mind on the merits of leaving quite like a club that totals up your hookers and dealers and then bills you retrospectively for the privilege of membership.
1. A new Commission, elected by people you did not elect
On 22 October the Parliament waved through Jean-Claude Juncker's college of 27 Commissioners by 423 votes to 209. The voters of Europe were not consulted on a single one of them, which is rather the point of the arrangement.
2. Binding targets, set by Brussels, marked by Brussels
At the summit of 23 and 24 October the European Council adopted a 2030 climate framework: at least 40 per cent fewer emissions, a renewables target of at least 27 per cent binding at EU level rather than national, and an energy efficiency target of at least 27 per cent left merely indicative. The genius of an EU-level target is that the schoolmaster who sets it is also the schoolmaster who grades it, and never the one who has to keep the lights on.
3. Twenty-five banks flunk the test that was designed to pass them
On 26 October the European Central Bank published its grand health-check of 130 lenders and announced that 25 had failed, with a combined hole of 25 billion euros. Curiously, not one French, German or Spanish bank was told to find more capital, which is the kind of result that inspires boundless confidence in the examiner.
4. Brussels opens a formal hunt for Amazon's tax bill
On 7 October the Commission launched a formal state aid investigation into Luxembourg's tax arrangements for Amazon, eventually deciding the firm owed some 250 million euros. The delicious detail is that the Luxembourg whose deals were under the microscope had been run for eighteen years by one Jean-Claude Juncker, sworn in as Commission President three weeks later.
5. Mare Nostrum ends, and the Union shrugs
Italy's costly sea-rescue operation wound down at the end of October, replaced from 1 November by Frontex's Triton: a third of the money, sixty-five staff, and a remit that hugged the Italian coast rather than the open sea. Years of Brussels preaching open borders, and when the bill for the consequences arrived the Union quietly decided that fishing people out of the water was an Italian problem.
6. The annual prize for being a moral beacon
On 21 October the Parliament announced that its Sakharov Prize would go to the Congolese surgeon Denis Mukwege, a genuinely admirable man pressed into service as a backdrop for Strasbourg's self-congratulation. The Union does love a ceremony in which it gets to hand out medals for virtues it does not have to practise.
7. One billion euros and a brand-new coordinator for Ebola
At the same October summit the leaders pledged to lift EU Ebola help to a round one billion euros and appointed Cyprus's incoming Commissioner, Christos Stylianides, as the bloc's Ebola coordinator. When in doubt, Brussels reaches for the two things it does best: a bigger number and a fresh title.
→ gov.uk
8. The oil man who got the climate job anyway
Miguel Arias Cañete, dogged by his past chairmanships of two oil firms and a late rewrite of his financial declarations, was nonetheless confirmed as Climate and Energy Commissioner. He survived not on his merits but on a secret deal between Juncker and senior MEPs that traded his approval for theirs, the gravy train running smoothly on its usual lubricant.
9. Brussels reloads its case against Google
As the outgoing competition chief Joaquin Almunia made way at the end of October, his half-settled antitrust case against Google was left simmering for his successor to reopen, with rivals queuing up to complain. The Union's instinct on seeing a successful American firm is never to leave it alone, but to find a fresh pretext to drag it back into the dock.
→ whqr.org
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