Eurobloat #0083 • March 2017
March 2017 was a busy month for the European project: a birthday party on the Capitoline Hill, a glossy pamphlet promising more of everything, a row with Ankara over rallies, and one member state finally heading for the exit. The future was discussed at great length, mostly by the people who already run it.
Folly of the Month: A White Paper with five roads, and four of them lead to more Europe
On 1 March, Jean-Claude Juncker handed the continent a White Paper on the Future of Europe, setting out five scenarios for the Union by 2025. The five ranged from carrying on as before, through doing less, to doing much more together, which is a remarkable spread of options for an institution that only ever seems to pick the last one. The single scenario that involved Brussels doing less, "Nothing but the Single Market", was written up in the tone you reserve for a wayward relative, while "Doing Much More Together" got the warm prose. A reflection exercise that costs nothing to start and binds nobody is the EU at its purest: the appearance of choice, with the answer printed at the back.
1. Sixty candles and a Declaration that mostly declares unity
On 25 March the leaders of twenty-seven member states gathered in Rome to mark sixty years of the founding treaties and signed a fresh Declaration promising a Union that is stronger, safer and more united than ever. One chair was conspicuously empty, the Union having just lost a member, which is the sort of unity that requires no further comment.
2. Britain posts the letter
On 29 March, Sir Tim Barrow handed Donald Tusk a six-page note triggering Article 50, and Theresa May confirmed the United Kingdom was leaving. Tusk, receiving formal notice that a country wished to govern itself, announced that there was no reason to pretend this was a happy day. For the rest of us it was the most honest verdict on the system in years.
→ gov.uk
3. The Court decides what you may wear to work, from Luxembourg
On 14 March the Court of Justice ruled in the Achbita and Bougnaoui cases that an employer may ban visible religious symbols, provided the rule is part of a general neutrality policy. Whatever one makes of the outcome, the spectacle of fifteen judges in Luxembourg settling a Belgian receptionist's dress code is the single market reaching places single markets were never meant to reach.
4. New gun rules for the law-abiding, after the criminals got there first
On 14 March, Parliament approved the revised Firearms Directive by 491 votes to 178, tightening controls on semi-automatics and high-capacity magazines after the Paris attacks. The terrorists who prompted it used illegal, smuggled weapons, so naturally the response was a fresh layer of paperwork for sport shooters and collectors who had broken no law at all.
5. The ePrivacy Regulation grinds on, with your messages in scope
Through March the Parliament's committees chewed over the Commission's ePrivacy Regulation, the proposal that would extend communications-confidentiality rules to WhatsApp, Skype and Messenger. Selling a regime that governs the scanning, storing and monitoring of private messages as a privacy measure takes a particular nerve, and Brussels has it.
6. The Turkey deal meets the Turkish campaign trail
In mid-March the Netherlands barred Turkish ministers from holding referendum rallies on Dutch soil, Erdogan called the Dutch fascists, and the whole continent discovered the cost of having tied its migration policy to Ankara the previous spring. Having paid a strongman to hold the border, the Union was now surprised to find him campaigning in its town squares.
7. A roaming "victory" for a problem Brussels created
By the end of January the lower wholesale price caps had been agreed between Parliament and Council, the last piece needed before mobile roaming charges were abolished on 15 June. It is presented as a triumph for the European consumer, which rather glosses over the years in which the same Union let operators levy the charges in the first place.
8. One rulebook to certify every bandage in Europe
On 7 March the Council adopted its first-reading position on the Medical Devices Regulation, replacing two older directives with a single sprawling regime for everything from hip implants to sticking plasters. Manufacturers were handed years of fresh conformity assessments and notified-body bottlenecks, and the small firms that could not afford the compliance simply withdrew products. Harmonisation, as ever, means a thicker manual for all.
9. Frankfurt's last cheap-money window closes
March brought the final operation of the ECB's second round of targeted longer-term refinancing, the scheme handing banks four-year loans at rates as low as the deposit facility. Years of near-free liquidity were waved through with the assurance that rates would stay at present or lower levels well past the horizon of asset purchases, which is central-banker for do not hold your breath.
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