Eurobloat #0059 • March 2015
March 2015 was the month Frankfurt finally admitted out loud that it was conjuring money from nothing, while Mr Juncker daydreamed about a continental army and the Commission rebranded sharing secrets among governments as transparency.
Folly of the Month: The European Central Bank fires up the printing press
On 9 March the ECB began its Public Sector Purchase Programme, hoovering up sixty billion euros of bonds every single month, around forty-four billion of it in government and agency debt. After years of solemnly insisting it would never do quantitative easing, the bank simply renamed the thing and did it anyway, propping up the very governments it is forbidden to finance. The price of the euro project's design faults, as ever, is paid by savers whose money quietly loses its worth, and by the next generation who never voted for any of it.
1. Mr Juncker wants an army
On 8 March the Commission president told Welt am Sonntag that the EU needed its own army to show Russia "we are serious". An unelected official musing about commanding troops is exactly the sort of thing that makes the case for keeping defence firmly with the nations that actually pay for it.
2. Transparency, but only between tax offices
On 18 March the Commission unveiled its Tax Transparency Package, requiring member states to swap their secret cross-border tax rulings with each other every three months. Note the careful wording: the rulings stay hidden from the public and are merely circulated among governments, which is to say it is centralisation dressed up as openness.
3. The Energy Union arrives, five dimensions included
At the European Council of 19 to 20 March, leaders signed up to building an Energy Union with no fewer than five grand "dimensions". Whenever Brussels gives a project this many dimensions, you can be confident the only thing that will actually be unified is the bill.
4. Roaming abolition, postponed yet again
On 4 March the Council adopted its negotiating line on the telecoms package, quietly deciding that mobile roaming charges would not vanish by the end of 2015 after all and watering down the net neutrality promises along the way. A decade of pledges to end roaming fees, and the deadline keeps retreating just as fast as anyone approaches it.
5. The Safe Harbour data deal goes on trial
On 24 March the Court of Justice heard the Schrems case, and the Commission's own lawyer was unable to assure the judges that European citizens' data was safe in American hands. The arrangement Brussels itself negotiated and blessed was, it turned out, built on sand, which is a fine advertisement for letting Brussels negotiate on your behalf.
6. Brussels grades the homework
On 11 March the Parliament adopted its resolution on the European Semester, the annual ritual in which the EU marks national budgets and employment policies like a schoolmaster handing back essays. Elected national governments, it seems, must now submit their economic plans to be assessed by an institution nobody can vote out.
7. The Citizens' Initiative, now with a report
On 31 March the Commission published its first report on the European Citizens' Initiative, the much-trumpeted petition scheme that lets a million people ask the Commission politely to consider doing something it can then ignore. Three years in, the chief finding was that the process is too complicated, which is the only thing Brussels does reliably.
8. Outsourcing the borders to the neighbours
At the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 12 and 13 March, ministers agreed to reinforce the external frontier and the resources of Frontex, and stressed that cooperation with third countries was essential to manage migration. Having struggled to control its own external border, Brussels reached for the familiar answer of leaning on the neighbours to do the job further from view.
9. New rules on what goes in your toys
On 31 March the Commission issued Delegated Directive 2015/863, adding four more phthalate chemicals to the list of substances banned from electrical equipment. Somewhere in Brussels a committee spent its days deciding precisely which plasticisers may grace your kettle, and was no doubt very proud of itself.
Enjoyed this post?
Well, you could share the post with others, follow me with RSS Feeds and/or send me a comment via email.
Tags
Category:
Year: