Eurobloat #0096 • April 2018
April was the month the Commission decided that the cure for a crisis of trust was more power, more committees and a larger expense account. It also found time to appoint itself the arbiter of truth, which is reassuring from the people who told us the single currency would never need a bailout.
Folly of the Month: The nine-minute promotion
On 18 April the European Parliament adopted a resolution describing the appointment of Martin Selmayr, Jean-Claude Juncker's chief of staff, as Secretary-General of the Commission as something that "could be seen as a coup-like action" which "stretched and possibly overstretched the limits of the law". Selmayr was made deputy Secretary-General and then promoted to the top civil service job on the very same day, in a process arranged so that no rival could apply. The Parliament huffed, demanded a reassessment, and pointedly declined to demand his resignation, so he kept the job. This is the institution that lectures member states on transparency and the rule of law, demonstrating how a vacancy is filled when nobody outside the room is allowed to apply.
1. Brussels appoints itself the Ministry of Truth
On 26 April the Commission unveiled a Communication on "tackling online disinformation", complete with an EU-wide Code of Practice, a network of approved fact-checkers and a generous definition of "disinformation" broad enough to cover almost anything inconvenient. The people who gave us a quarter-century of growth-and-jobs forecasts now propose to tell you which information is verifiably false.
→ digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
2. Your inbox, no passport required
On 17 April the Commission tabled its "e-evidence" Regulation, creating a European Production Order and a European Preservation Order so that prosecutors in one member state can compel a provider in another to hand over your emails, documents and cloud files directly, without troubling the authorities in your own country. The safeguard that a foreign judge might have to be involved was treated as a needless formality. Cross-border policing, minus the inconvenient borders.
3. Twenty billion euros for a press release
On 25 April the Commission published "Artificial Intelligence for Europe", a strategy that proposes to mobilise twenty billion euros of investment, a coordinated plan to be drawn up later, and three pillars of warm sentiment about values. The plan to draw up the plan would arrive in December. Europe will lead the world in artificial intelligence the moment the working group finishes its terms of reference.
→ digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
4. Harmonising your conscience
On 23 April the Commission proposed an EU-wide Whistleblower Directive, declaring that protection which varied by member state could not be tolerated and must be standardised from Brussels. The stated worry was that differing national rules might "undermine the level-playing field". Even the act of reporting wrongdoing is now something that must be the same in twenty-eight capitals, lest a member state get it right on its own.
5. A New Deal nobody asked for
On 11 April the Commission launched its "New Deal for Consumers", a pair of directives importing a continental class-action regime and rewriting four existing consumer laws at once. The fix for rules so complicated that ordinary people cannot enforce them is, naturally, more rules and a new collective litigation industry. The Injunctions Directive was not working, so it was replaced with something larger.
6. Brussels reaches for the bee veto
On 27 April member states voted, on the Commission's proposal, for a near-total ban on outdoor use of three neonicotinoid pesticides across the whole Union. Whatever one thinks of the chemicals, the decision on what a Polish or Spanish farmer may spray on his own field is now taken in a Brussels committee room by qualified majority. The continent's agriculture, settled by a show of hands among officials.
→ npr.org
7. The schoolmaster grades Warsaw again
In April the Commission pressed on with its Article 7 procedure against Poland, having submitted a reasoned proposal that Warsaw posed a "clear risk of a serious breach" of the rule of law over its judicial reforms. Whatever the merits of Poland's courts, the spectacle is the Commission appointing itself examiner of a sovereign parliament's legislation and threatening to strip its voting rights. Returning power to member states this is not.
8. GDPR to the rescue, a bit late
On 18 April the Parliament held an indignant debate on the Cambridge Analytica affair, with members hailing the soon-to-arrive General Data Protection Regulation as the "line of defence" against election manipulation. The misuse they were denouncing had already happened, before the great regulation came into force, and the chief outcome was a fresh compliance burden landing on every small business in Europe rather than the firms in question. Big Tech wrote the cheques; your corner shop filled in the forms.
9. More Europe, now with extra Balkans
Throughout April the Commission and Parliament pushed the 2018 enlargement strategy for the Western Balkans towards the Sofia summit in May, dangling 2025 as a possible accession date for the region. An institution that cannot make its existing members comply with its own rulings is busy advertising for six more. The answer to overstretch, as ever, is to stretch further.
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