Eurobloat #0074 • June 2016
June 2016 was the month one nation looked at the project, weighed it carefully and walked out of the door. Brussels spent the rest of the month proving the point: buying debt, buying regimes, and refusing to take no for an answer.
Folly of the Month: Eight billion euros to make other people's borders the EU's problem
On 7 June the Commission unveiled a new Partnership Framework with third countries, proposing to mobilise nearly eight billion euros to persuade Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Ethiopia and others to stop people leaving for Europe and to take back the ones who arrive. Having spent years insisting that borders were backward and that migration would manage itself, the Commission discovered the borders of unsavoury foreign governments and decided to rent them. The framework dangles aid, trade and visas as leverage, which is to say it pays distant regimes to do the unglamorous work the EU will not do at its own frontier. The pitch was that this was a humane, sophisticated answer. The reality was a cheque written to whoever would hold the line.
1. The British voted to leave, and Brussels regretted it
On 23 June the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, and the four presidents of the Union issued a statement saying they regretted the decision but respected it. They added that the February settlement negotiated to keep Britain in had now ceased to exist and that there would be no renegotiation. A people exercised the one power the treaties could not take away, and the response was a press release about regret.
2. Twenty-seven leaders met to agree there would be no talking
At the European Council of 28 to 29 June, the twenty-seven gathered without Britain for the first time and resolved that there would be no negotiations of any kind until the UK formally triggered Article 50. Faced with a member that wished to leave, the Union's first instinct was to insist the leaving be done on its timetable and not the member's. They also pencilled in a summit in Bratislava to discuss the future, which is the EU's standard remedy for any problem: another summit.
3. The ECB started buying company bonds with freshly conjured money
On 8 June the European Central Bank began purchasing corporate bonds under the corporate sector purchase programme, having announced the remaining details on 2 June. An unelected central bank now decides which large companies enjoy cheaper borrowing, having appointed itself a buyer in markets it is supposed to merely watch. Nothing says healthy capitalism like the monetary authority owning the debt of the firms.
4. Ministers agreed to harmonise corporate tax across the bloc
On 21 June the finance ministers reached political agreement on the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive, setting EU-wide minimum rules on how member states may tax companies. Taxation is meant to be the jealously guarded preserve of national parliaments, which is precisely why Brussels finds it so tempting to standardise from the centre. The directive was sold as fighting avoidance; what it quietly delivers is a common rulebook drafted in Brussels and imposed on every capital.
5. The new border force that could not stop the boats
On 21 and 22 June the Parliament and Council struck a deal to upgrade Frontex into a European Border and Coast Guard, complete with rapid-reaction teams to be deployed to frontiers under pressure. The Union spent years dismantling internal borders and pretending the external one would look after itself; now it builds a new agency to undo the consequences of its own optimism. A coast guard arriving years after the crisis is the EU's idea of foresight.
6. The Turkey visa deal that the deadline outran
The grand March bargain promised Turkish citizens visa-free travel by the end of June in exchange for Ankara holding back migrants, provided seventy-two benchmarks were met. June ended with several benchmarks unmet, the promise unfulfilled and the awkward spectacle of the Union having committed six billion euros and its visa regime to a deal it could not actually complete on time. This is what happens when you sign first and read the conditions later.
7. Sanctions on Crimea extended for another year
On 17 June the Council extended its restrictive measures on Crimea and Sevastopol until June 2017, banning imports, investment and even cruise ships calling at Crimean ports. The measures are perfectly reasonable; the curiosity is a Union that can renew sanctions like clockwork yet cannot agree on much else without a fortnight of summitry.
8. Unable to decide on a weedkiller, the EU kicked the can
At the end of June, with member states deadlocked and unable to muster a majority either to renew or to reject glyphosate, the Commission granted an eighteen-month extension to avoid an immediate ban while it asked yet another agency to study the matter further. A bloc that legislates the curvature of cucumbers found it could not reach a verdict on a herbicide, so it did what it does best and postponed. Decisive government, Brussels style.
9. Parliament passed a regulation to govern its own administration
On 9 June the Parliament adopted a resolution calling for a regulation for an open, efficient and independent European Union administration, proposing common rules for how the EU's own institutions conduct their business. An institution that produces rulebooks for everyone else turned the machine on itself and produced a rulebook about producing rulebooks. The result is more law, more procedure and the warm glow of having regulated something.
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