Eurobloat #0094 • February 2018
February gave us a senior bureaucrat promoted twice in the time it takes to boil an egg, a plan to fill the Brexit hole with fresh EU taxes, and a Parliament that found time to worry about daylight saving while waving through more single-market rulebook.
Folly of the Month: The nine-minute career of Martin Selmayr
On 21 February the Commission appointed Jean-Claude Juncker's chief of staff, Martin Selmayr, to a job that exists to keep the chief of staff and 32,000 other officials in line. He was made deputy secretary-general and then, within minutes, promoted again to secretary-general, the most powerful unelected post in Brussels, in a manoeuvre slipped onto the agenda at the last moment so that no commissioner could object. The Commission insisted everything was proper. The European Ombudsman would later conclude it was not, finding four instances of maladministration and that the whole deputy contest had been staged for the sole purpose of making one man eligible for the top chair.
1. The Brexit hole, to be plugged with your money
With Britain on the way out and roughly ten billion euros a year leaving with it, budget commissioner Günther Oettinger offered a cheerful "50/50" solution: half from cuts, half from "fresh money". Spending less, it seems, can only ever be half the answer, because an institution that has lost a paymaster reaches first for a new revenue stream rather than the off switch.
→ cer.eu
2. A budget paper full of "illustrative" new taxes
On 14 February the Commission published its long-term budget musings ahead of the leaders' summit, complete with options for "new own resources", which is Brussels for taxes levied at EU level rather than handed up by member states. Every figure was helpfully labelled "illustrative", so that when the bill arrives nobody can be blamed for the number on it.
3. Reallocating Britain's empty chairs before the divorce is final
At the February plenary, MEPs voted to carve up 27 of the 73 seats Britain will vacate among the under-represented, while quietly parking the remaining 46 as a reserve for pan-European lists and future enlargement. France, Italy and Spain were the chief beneficiaries, and the empty British benches had already been mentally redecorated.
4. Transnational lists, mercifully shot down
The dream of MEPs elected from a single Europe-wide constituency, accountable to no nation in particular, briefly flew before Parliament rejected it on 7 February and the leaders buried it again on 23 February. A rare outbreak of sense, and proof that the best EU ideas of the month are the ones that did not happen.
5. The leaders meet to decide who decides
At the informal summit of 23 February the 27 leaders agreed that, contrary to Parliament's wishes, the European Council would not promise in advance to crown a "lead candidate" as Commission president. So the elected chamber wants the top job filled by its own process, the leaders want it kept for themselves, and the voter is invited to admire the tug of war from a safe distance.
6. A €1.07 billion enlargement prospectus for the Western Balkans
On 6 February the Commission unveiled a strategy dangling 2025 as a possible accession date for six Balkan states, bundled with six "flagship initiatives" to extend the Energy Union, the border guard and cheaper roaming into the region. The Union that cannot agree how to run itself after Brexit is already drawing up the welcome banners for the next intake.
7. Parliament ponders the clocks
On 8 February, by 384 votes to 153, MEPs asked the Commission to "thoroughly assess" whether Europe should keep changing the clocks twice a year. Five hundred million people, several pressing crises, and the plenary applied its collective mind to whether it is too dark at breakfast.
8. Geo-blocking abolished, rulebook expanded
The same plenary approved the geo-blocking regulation, which forbids online sellers from turning away or overcharging shoppers because of where they live. A sensible enough aim, achieved in the only way Brussels knows, by adding another regulation, another set of obligations and another compliance headache to the pile it built in the first place.
9. €546 million of fines, and a new committee for good measure
On 21 February the Commission fined maritime car carriers and parts suppliers a combined 546 million euros for cartels, while on 6 February Parliament set up a brand new special committee, PEST, to fret over how pesticides such as glyphosate get approved. One hand collects the cheques, the other spawns another committee, and the machine grows whichever way you look at it.
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