Eurobloat #0068 • December 2015
December 2015 was the month the European Union looked at a continent it could not control and concluded the answer was a great deal more European Union.
Folly of the Month: The EU proposes to send guards to your border without asking you
On 15 December the Commission unveiled the European Border and Coast Guard, a rebranded Frontex armed with a tidy new power: a "right to intervene". In plain terms the agency could deploy guards to a member state's external frontier on a decision taken in Brussels, without the consent of the country whose border it is. The lesson Brussels drew from years of failing to manage the EU's external borders was not that it should do less, but that it should overrule national capitals while doing it. A free-movement zone, we are told, requires shared responsibility, which in practice means responsibility shared until the moment a vote is taken over your head.
1. Every passenger filed and kept for five years
On 2 December negotiators struck a deal on the EU Passenger Name Record directive, endorsed by the civil liberties committee on 10 December. Airlines will hand over the travel records of passengers, to be retained for five years, unmasked for the first six months. A continent that cannot guard its own coastline has found the resources to log everyone who flies across it.
2. The General Data Protection Regulation is born
On 15 December the institutions agreed the text of the GDPR, confirmed by the Council on 18 December. Brussels promised it would protect your privacy, which is a generous thing to hear from the same fortnight it agreed to keep your flight records for five years. The result is a compliance industry, a wall of cookie banners, and the firm conviction in every Brussels office that more rules equal more rights.
3. Billions for Ankara, a Schengen visa as the tip
The EU-Turkey Joint Action Plan, activated on 29 November and fleshed out on 15 December, offered President Erdoğan three billion euros, the dangle of visa-free travel, and a revived accession process, all so that Turkey would stem the flow of migrants the EU could not. Amnesty International used December to report refugees being detained and deported under exactly this arrangement. An open-borders project paying an increasingly unsavoury government to do its border control for cash is not a policy, it is an admission.
4. Diesel cheating, now with a licence
Fresh from the Volkswagen scandal, member states had quietly written a "conformity factor" letting diesel cars exceed the legal nitrogen oxide limit by up to 110 per cent. On 14 December the environment committee objected that this is neither explained nor justified. Brussels caught the industry cheating on emissions and responded by legalising twice the pollution.
5. Better Law-Making, agreed by the people who made the law worse
On 8 December the three institutions reached political agreement on an Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Law-Making, confirmed by the Council on 15 December. The body that produced the burden now promises to be the body that simplifies it, which is rather like the arsonist applying to run the fire brigade. Note that nobody who built the red tape is held accountable for it.
6. Brussels will license your holiday box-sets
On 9 December the Commission opened its copyright reform with a proposal on the cross-border portability of online content, the first instalment of a long campaign to manage how Netflix works across the single market. The crisis of the age, apparently, is that your subscription does not travel with you to Lisbon. A directive will fix it.
→ digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
7. Paris, and a standing ovation for itself
On 12 December the Paris Agreement was adopted, whereupon Commissioner Cañete called it "a major win for Europe" and Juncker declared the world had been handed "a lifeline". The deal commits other people to act later while the EU commits to congratulating itself now. Few institutions can convert a global negotiation into a press release about their own leadership quite so smoothly.
8. Cameron sent home to wait until February
At the summit of 17 and 18 December the European Council debated Britain's renegotiation and agreed to agree later. Donald Tusk reported "good progress" while admitting they had still to "overcome the substantial political differences" on benefits and free movement, so the matter was kicked to February. A union that cannot give a member state a straight answer on its own membership was, within six months, given one at the ballot box.
9. A prize for a vision of "more Europe"
December brought the announcement that the 2016 Charlemagne Prize, the EU establishment's annual award for the European ideal, would go to Pope Francis. Mid-crisis, the great and the good of Brussels found time to organise a medal ceremony about themselves. The borders were failing, but the canapés were ready.
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