Eurobloat #0097 • May 2018
May 2018 was the month the EU gave us GDPR, a budget with its own private taxes, and a crusade against the cotton bud. If your inbox was buried under panicked re-consent emails this month, Brussels would like you to know that this was for your own good.
Folly of the Month: GDPR descends, and a billion consent banners are born
On 25 May the General Data Protection Regulation finally became enforceable, two years after it passed, and the continent ground to a halt under a deluge of "we have updated our privacy policy" emails and pop-up consent walls that nobody reads and everybody clicks away. The promise was dignity and control over your data. The delivery was a compliance industry, fines reaching into the tens of millions of euros, and a web experience where you now agree to 400 "legitimate interests" before you can read a recipe. The rules apply to any organisation anywhere on earth that so much as glances at a European, which is Brussels' favourite kind of law: one it writes for the whole planet and asks no one's permission to impose.
→ gdpr.eu
1. The EU proposes its own pocket money, funded by its own taxes
On 2 May the Commission unveiled a 1,135 billion euro budget for 2021 to 2027, bundled with a plan for new "own resources" so that Brussels can raise revenue without going through the tiresome business of asking national parliaments. A levy on non-recycled plastic was floated as a tidy way to fund roughly four per cent of the budget. An institution that cannot be voted out would now like its own till.
2. Brussels appoints itself headmaster, cane in hand
Alongside the budget, the Commission proposed a "rule of law" mechanism letting it suspend EU funds from member states it judges to have "generalised deficiencies". Translated: behave as Brussels prefers, or the money stops. Poland and Hungary, the largest recipients, were plainly the intended pupils, and the principle that the centre may grade and fine the capitals was quietly established.
3. The war on the drinking straw is declared
On 28 May the Commission unveiled its single-use plastics directive, proposing to ban straws, cotton buds, plastic cutlery, plates, stirrers and balloon sticks across the entire single market. Ten categories of small disposable objects were elevated into a continent-wide legislative crusade. Nothing says "ever closer union" quite like harmonising the regulation of the cotton bud.
4. Parliament demands a logbook for your odometer
On 31 May MEPs called for new EU-wide rules against "car clocking", including national mileage registers and mandatory recording of the odometer at every inspection, service, repair and "other garage visit". A genuine nuisance, used-car fraud, becomes the pretext for a cross-border database tracking every visit your car makes to the garage. The cure, as ever, is more centralised data.
5. Zuckerberg drops in, answers nothing, leaves
On 22 May Mark Zuckerberg gave the European Parliament around an hour of questions and under ten minutes of answers, then departed having apologised for everything and clarified nothing. MEPs called the format a farce, which it was. The lesson Brussels drew was not that grandstanding is pointless but that it needed even bigger powers to summon and fine the very companies it had just been outmanoeuvred by.
6. The EU orders its own firms to ignore American law
After Washington left the Iran nuclear deal on 8 May, the Commission announced on 18 May that it would dust off the "blocking statute", forbidding European companies from complying with US sanctions and nullifying foreign judgments based on them. A grand gesture of sovereignty, aimed at protecting trade with Tehran, that left European firms choosing between defying Brussels and defying the world's largest financial system. Most quietly chose the latter and pulled out of Iran anyway.
7. The Posting of Workers Directive, revised so it is harder to compete
On 29 May Parliament approved revised rules on posted workers by 456 to 147, capping postings at twelve months and demanding the host country's full pay regime apply. Sold as fairness, it was a tidy way to blunt the one advantage that eastern firms had in the western market: the right to compete on cost. The single market, it turns out, is freest when it suits the larger economies.
8. Sofia summit: enlargement is off, migration management is on
On 17 May EU leaders met the six Western Balkan states in Sofia and signed a declaration long on "connectivity" and "cooperation on migration" and conspicuously short on any actual promise of membership. The one thing the candidates wanted, a date, was not on the menu. The one thing Brussels wanted, their help stemming illegal migration along the route, very much was.
9. Trade defence "modernised", which is to say expanded
On 30 May Parliament gave final approval to a revamp of the EU's anti-dumping and anti-subsidy machinery, partially waiving the "lesser duty rule" so that higher tariffs can be slapped on imports more easily. Dressed up as protecting European industry, it is simply more discretion for Brussels to raise the cost of foreign goods, which European consumers then pay. Protectionism with a thesaurus.
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