Eurobloat #0064 • August 2015
August 2015 was the month the great European project worked exactly as advertised: a third bottomless loan for Greece, borders that existed only when a member state was scolded for protecting them, and a Commission that responded to its own open-border failure by demanding more Europe.
Folly of the Month: A third bailout, because the first two were such a triumph
On 14 August the Eurogroup blessed Greece's third rescue, a financing envelope of up to 86 billion euros, and on 19 August the first instalment of up to 26 billion duly began flowing. This was the third such programme in five years, each sold as the last, each tied to conditions written in Brussels and supervised by the same institutions that designed the single currency Greece could neither leave nor afford to stay in. The cure for the failure of the previous two bailouts was, naturally, a larger bailout, with the Troika installed once more as headmaster marking Athens' homework. Nobody in the Commission, the ECB or the Council was held responsible for any of it, which is the one part of the system that has always functioned flawlessly.
1. Germany quietly shreds the Dublin rulebook
On 21 August Germany's migration office issued internal instructions suspending Dublin procedures for Syrian nationals, the rule that was meant to keep asylum claims with the first country of entry. A cornerstone of the EU's asylum architecture was abandoned by its largest member state with a memo, and the rest of the continent was left to discover the new policy from the newspapers.
2. We take down walls, says the Commission, from behind its own collapsing border
On 14 August Migration Commissioner Avramopoulos announced emergency aid for Hungary while scolding it for protecting its frontier, declaring that in Europe we take down walls, we do not put up new ones. A country trying to control who crossed into it was the villain; the Commission presiding over the largest uncontrolled movement of people since the war was the hero.
3. Macedonia did what Brussels would not
On 20 August the non-member state of Macedonia declared a state of emergency and sealed its border with Greece, an EU member, after tens of thousands of arrivals overwhelmed it. The lesson that a border is a thing you can actually defend was delivered to the Union by a candidate country it likes to keep waiting in the antechamber.
4. A summit about the Balkans, hijacked by the crisis Brussels caused
The Western Balkans Summit in Vienna on 27 August was meant to celebrate regional cooperation and the long road to accession. Instead it was swallowed whole by the migration emergency, as leaders who had spent the summer insisting the situation was under control gathered to admit that it was not.
5. The Dublin system has been outstripped by developments, confesses its keeper
On 28 August Avramopoulos conceded that the Dublin treaty had been outstripped by developments from the moment it was adopted and now needed revising. It is a rare official admission that the rules the Commission spends its days enforcing on member states do not survive contact with reality, delivered only once they had already failed.
6. Brussels declares war on a film you cannot watch yet
Throughout August the Commission pressed its antitrust case against Sky and six Hollywood studios over the geo-blocking clauses that keep British and Irish pay-TV deals inside Britain and Ireland. In the name of the single market, the Commission set itself the task of dictating to private firms how they may license a film across a continent, on the theory that a contract you dislike is a crime against free trade.
7. The fog of confusion was, on closer inspection, the Commission
On 23 August the Commission promised to publish detailed reports on the TTIP trade talks, having spent the previous month cutting off member governments' access to the negotiating files to stop leaks. Trade Commissioner Malmstrom blamed a fog of confusion, apparently unaware that the fog was manufactured in her own directorate and dispensed only when the secrecy became too embarrassing to maintain.
8. The VAT rules that closed the smallest businesses in Europe
The digital VAT regime that took effect in January 2015 was still doing its quiet damage through August, forcing a one-woman seller of an ebook to charge and account for the tax rate of every customer's country and keep the evidence for ten years. The campaign group EU VAT Action reported businesses shutting down rather than comply, a textbook demonstration of Brussels building a burden so heavy that only the giants it claims to be regulating can carry it.
9. The answer to a failing common policy is, as ever, more common policy
By late August the Commission was setting up migration hotspots in Sicily and Piraeus and, on 30 August, France, Germany and the United Kingdom were demanding a special emergency meeting of interior ministers. The remedy for an EU-wide scheme that had collapsed was a larger EU-wide scheme, devised by the same hands, to be supervised from the same offices.
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