Eurobloat #0073 • May 2016
May 2016 was the month Brussels put a price tag on human beings, lectured Warsaw about the rule of law, and decided that the real problem with your television was an insufficient quantity of approved European content. With a referendum looming across the Channel, the Commission spent the month giving the Leave campaign its best material for free.
Folly of the Month: A migrant will cost you 250,000 euros
On 4 May the Commission unveiled its reform of the Dublin asylum system, and buried inside was a number to remember: 250,000 euros. That is the "solidarity contribution" a member state would have to pay, per applicant, for the crime of declining to accept migrants the Commission has decided to send it. Set aside the open-borders policy that created the crisis in the first place; the genius here is the principle, that a national parliament saying no to Brussels is not a democratic act but an invoice. Countries that guarded their own borders were to be fined for it, which is a curious definition of solidarity.
1. Parliament tells the Commission not to gift China a present
On 12 May the European Parliament voted by roughly four to one to oppose granting China "market economy status", a designation that would have stripped the EU of its best defence against dumped Chinese steel. A rare outbreak of sense, which the Commission then spent the rest of the year trying to fudge anyway.
2. The geo-blocking regulation arrives to abolish a problem with a regulation
On 25 May the Commission proposed a regulation banning "unjustified geo-blocking" in online shopping. The cross-border barriers it set out to demolish were, of course, mostly erected by the EU's own VAT and copyright thicket, so the cure for one Brussels rule is now a second Brussels rule policing the first.
3. Netflix ordered to carry more approved European films
The same 25 May package included a revised Audiovisual Media Services Directive demanding that on-demand services reserve at least 20 per cent of their catalogues for European works. Nothing says cultural confidence like compelling streaming firms to stock films nobody chose to watch, with member states free to slap a levy on top.
4. Your cigarettes get new rules and your packet of ten disappears
On 20 May the Tobacco Products Directive became applicable across the Union, banning packs of ten, abolishing "slim" packets, plastering 65 per cent picture warnings over every box and phasing out menthol. Brussels cannot decide whether you are a sovereign adult or a child to be frightened, so it settled on the latter and standardised the lettering.
5. The Turkey visa deal hits a wall named Erdogan
The grubby March bargain, billions of euros and visa-free travel for 75 million Turks in exchange for stemming the migrant flow, stalled in May when President Erdogan flatly refused to soften his anti-terror law as the EU demanded. Brussels had outsourced its border policy to a leader busy jailing journalists, and was shocked to find him an unreliable partner.
6. Brussels hands out school reports to entire nations
On 18 May the Commission published its country-specific recommendations, grading member states on their budgets and threatening Spain and Portugal with fines of up to 0.2 per cent of GDP for missing deficit targets. The institution that cannot pass its own audited accounts appointed itself headmaster of two democracies, then quietly cancelled the punishment by July.
7. The Parliament invents the "electronic person"
On 31 May a draft report from the legal affairs committee floated giving the most advanced robots the status of "electronic persons", complete with rights and a new EU Agency for Robotics to oversee them. Faced with a continent of real problems, MEPs reached instead for the legal personhood of a vacuum cleaner.
8. The schoolmaster turns to Poland
By the end of May the Commission was finalising a formal "rule of law" opinion against Poland over its constitutional tribunal, the first stage of a procedure aimed squarely at how an elected member state arranges its own judiciary. The opinion was adopted on 1 June. Whether or not Warsaw was wrong, the spectacle of Brussels appointing itself the supreme arbiter of national constitutions told voters everywhere exactly where power now sits.
9. A regulation to make parcels cheaper, from the people who taxed them
The 25 May e-commerce bundle also proposed a regulation on cross-border parcel delivery, with the Commission demanding price transparency and reserving the power to weigh in on tariffs it deemed too high. Having fragmented the single market with its own rules, Brussels now positions itself as the referee of postage stamps.
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