Eurobloat #0092 • December 2017
December is the season of giving, and Brussels gave generously: a new fund, a new minister, a new defence club and a fresh set of judgements on how the rest of us should live. The only thing it did not give was a say to anyone who would have to pay for it all.
Folly of the Month: A European Monetary Fund and a Finance Minister for a country that does not exist
On 6 December the Commission unveiled its package to "deepen" the euro, which in plain English means moving more money and more decisions to the centre. It proposed turning the bailout mechanism into a European Monetary Fund inside EU law, folding the fiscal compact into the treaties, opening a dedicated euro-area budget line, and crowning the lot with a European Minister of Economy and Finance. A continent that cannot agree on a fishing quota was to acquire a treasury, a fund and a chancellor, all in the name of "democratic accountability", and all without troubling the voters who would foot the bill. Nine years after the euro nearly fell over, the cure on offer was, predictably, more euro.
1. The nuclear option, aimed at Warsaw
On 20 December the Commission triggered Article 7 against Poland over its judicial reforms, the first time the so-called nuclear option had ever been used. Brussels appointed itself headmaster, marched a member state to the front of the class, and threatened to dock its voting rights for the crime of legislating without permission.
2. A defence pact you can check out of but never leave
On 11 December the Council formally launched PESCO, binding twenty-five member states into permanent, structured military integration. It was sold as cooperation and saving money, which is the same language used for every scheme that quietly pulls another national power towards the centre. Britain, sensibly, was on its way out of the room.
3. The Court decides an app is a taxi rank
On 20 December the Court of Justice ruled that Uber is not a digital service but a transport company, and so may be licensed and regulated like any taxi firm in up to twenty-eight member states. A single phone app was thereby handed back to twenty-eight sets of local rule-makers, which the judges called clarity and everyone else called paperwork.
4. The blacklist with no teeth
On 5 December EU finance ministers named seventeen jurisdictions as tax havens and waved the list about as proof of resolve. The Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Jersey somehow escaped, while the punishment for those who did make the list remained gloriously undefined. Campaigners called it a toothless whitewash, which is a polite way of describing a sermon with a press release attached.
5. A "one stop shop" for the taxman
Also on 5 December the Council adopted new VAT rules for cross-border e-commerce, complete with a centralised "One Stop Shop" portal. The name promised simplicity for traders; the substance moved another lever of taxation towards Brussels, where every "simplification" seems to require a new EU-wide system to administer it.
6. The Parliament debates the chemistry of kebabs
On 13 December MEPs solemnly voted on whether to veto a Commission proposal allowing phosphate additives in frozen meat spits, the stuff of the high-street doner. The veto failed by three votes, sparing the kebab, but only after the elected representatives of half a billion people had spent their time legislating on the seasoning of street food. This is what "ever closer union" looks like from the grill.
7. The cookie crusade rumbles on
December saw the ePrivacy Regulation grind through its negotiations, with the Parliament pressing for browser-level consent and "do not track" defaults across the bloc. Dressed up as protecting the citizen, it promised yet another layer of pop-ups, banners and box-ticking, the surest sign that Brussels had mistaken regulating the internet for understanding it.
8. More money for the flagship fund
On 12 December the Parliament backed extending the European Fund for Strategic Investment, the Juncker plan, until 2020 with a larger envelope. A fund whose headline figures were always a feat of accounting was rewarded with more years and more money, because in Brussels the answer to an unproven scheme is rarely to stop it.
9. Brexit clears phase one, and the system blinks
On 14 and 15 December the European Council declared "sufficient progress" and agreed to move Brexit talks to phase two and a transition. The very fact that twenty-seven capitals had to negotiate so hard over one country leaving was the quiet admission that the door, for once, was opening outward.
→ commonslibrary.parliament.uk
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