Eurobloat #0066 • October 2015
A month in which the EU's own court declared one of the Commission's flagship deals unlawful, the Commission rewarded the diesel cheats with weaker limits, and the cure for an open border was a cheque to a regime in Ankara. Self-government at its finest.
Folly of the Month: The Commission spent fifteen years promising your data was safe, then its own court said it was not
On 6 October the Court of Justice struck down the Safe Harbour scheme, the Commission's 2000 decision that had blessed the transfer of Europeans' personal data to the United States. For fifteen years Brussels assured everyone the arrangement was sound; it took an Austrian law student, Max Schrems, and the revelations about American mass surveillance to prove the assurance worthless. So the very institution that lectures member states on data protection had itself signed off on shipping that data into a surveillance dragnet, and only the judges noticed. Quite the advertisement for trusting Brussels with your private life.
→ inforrm.org → eur-lex.europa.eu
1. The regulators caught the diesel cheats, then voted to let them carry on
On 28 October the Commission's technical committee agreed real-driving emissions rules that let new cars exceed the legal nitrogen-oxide limit by up to 110 per cent. A month after Volkswagen was caught rigging its engines, the official response was not to enforce the limit but to raise it. The law on the page stayed strict; the law on the road was quietly doubled.
2. A new EU-wide rulebook for the internet, written so badly even its backers cannot say what it means
On 27 October Parliament adopted Regulation 2015/2120 on open internet access, hailed as net neutrality and the end of roaming charges. The text was so riddled with loopholes that it left national regulators and courts to work out what the rules actually were. Brussels claimed a new continent-wide power, then admitted it did not know how to use it.
3. The cure for an open border was a cheque to Ankara
On 15 October the Commission unveiled a Joint Action Plan with Turkey to stem the migrant flow it had spent the summer encouraging. The price tag included money, revived accession talks and visa-free travel for Turkish citizens. Having lost control of its own frontier, Brussels chose to outsource it to President Erdogan and call the dependency a partnership.
4. No time for business as usual, says the institution whose business is never finished
On 27 October the Commission presented its 2016 work programme under the slogan "No time for business as usual". The document promised, as every such document does, a leaner and busier Brussels with priorities on migration, jobs and energy. The motto changes each year; the appetite for more legislation never does.
5. Parliament voted to stop countries banning crops they do not want
On 28 October MEPs rejected, by 577 votes to 75 with 38 abstentions, a Commission plan that would have let member states opt out of EU-approved genetically modified food and feed on their own soil. The stated objection was that national bans lacked legal certainty. The practical result was that Brussels kept the final word over what a country may grow, and a rare offer of devolution went in the bin.
6. Parliament demanded to know what the Commission knew about diesel, and got an inquiry instead of an answer
On 27 October Parliament passed a resolution on the emissions scandal, calling for a thorough investigation into the role of the Commission and member-state authorities who were meant to be policing the tests. The reward for years of waved-through fraud was the promise of a committee. No official lost a job; the machine investigated itself.
7. A new central reserve to fix the carbon market Brussels itself broke
On 6 October the Parliament and Council adopted Decision 2015/1814 creating a Market Stability Reserve for the emissions trading scheme, due to start hoarding allowances in 2019. The reserve exists because the EU flooded its own market with permits and crashed the price. The solution to a Brussels-designed surplus was, naturally, a Brussels-controlled lever to manage it.
8. Trade for All, the strategy named after the people who were not consulted
On 14 October the Commission launched "Trade for All", a new trade and investment strategy promising effectiveness, transparency and values. It was a rebranding exercise aimed at calming the uproar over the TTIP talks with Washington, which were being conducted behind closed doors. The cure for secrecy was a glossy document about openness.
9. The grand relocation scheme nobody wanted to honour
October opened with the EU still pressing its plan, agreed in September against the votes of several capitals, to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers across the bloc by quota. Countries that objected were outvoted and ordered to comply. A scheme imposed over the heads of national parliaments duly delivered numbers in the dozens, not the thousands, proving only that Brussels can compel a vote far more easily than a result.
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