Eurobloat #0102 • October 2018
October was the month the Commission discovered a power it had never used before, the power to mark a member state's homework and hand it back with a red cross. Everything else, from straws to clocks to private companies, simply followed from the same instinct: Brussels knows best.
Folly of the Month: The headmaster rejects Rome's homework
On 23 October the European Commission did something it had never done in the history of the euro: it formally rejected a member state's national budget and ordered the government to write it again. Italy's elected coalition had planned a deficit of 2.4 percent of GDP, which Brussels deemed an unacceptable deviation, and so Rome was given three weeks to resubmit a draft more to the Commission's liking. A budget passed by a national parliament now requires the approval of unelected officials in another country, and somehow this is described as a partnership of equals.
1. The straw must die
On 24 October the Parliament voted by 571 to 53 to ban single-use plastic straws, cutlery, plates, stirrers and cotton bud sticks across the entire continent from 2021, then enthusiastically added more items to the banned list for good measure. Five hundred million people will be told what cutlery they may use at a picnic, because nothing says continental greatness like legislating the beverage stirrer.
2. The printing press is gently switched off, eventually
On 25 October the ECB confirmed it would keep buying bonds at 15 billion euros a month until December and only then stop, having spent years inflating the largest asset-purchase programme in its history. Rates stayed pinned at zero and below, where they had been parked since the last crisis, and savers were once again thanked for their patience.
3. The summit that achieved nothing, on schedule
At the European Council of 17 and 18 October, the twenty-seven gathered to advance the Brexit talks and concluded that not enough progress had been made, so the negotiator was instructed to keep negotiating. This was the "moment of truth" the same leaders had promised back in Salzburg, and it produced a communiqué reaffirming confidence in everyone and a decision to meet again later.
4. Open borders, now with 95 percent fewer borders
The same summit adopted conclusions on migration noting that illegal crossings were down 95 percent from their 2015 peak, and quietly pledged deeper cooperation with the regimes of North Africa to keep the numbers falling. Having spent years insisting that controlling the frontier was impossible and unkind, Brussels now takes credit for the very thing it spent years resisting.
5. Parliament demands an audit of a foreign company
On 25 October MEPs passed a resolution on Cambridge Analytica demanding that EU bodies be allowed to conduct a "full and independent audit" of Facebook, an American firm, and report back to the Commission, the Parliament and national parliaments. The remedy for a privacy scandal, naturally, is more institutions inspecting more of everyone's data.
6. Forty percent, because round numbers feel decisive
On 3 October the Parliament voted to demand a 40 percent cut in new-car CO2 emissions by 2030, overruling the Commission's own 30 percent figure as insufficiently ambitious. A chamber that does not manufacture a single vehicle confidently informed those who do exactly how much engineering they would deliver and by when.
7. The continent cannot decide what time it is
Having received 4.6 million consultation responses, the Commission had proposed abolishing the seasonal clock change, and at the late-October transport ministers' meeting in Graz a majority agreed in principle while quietly admitting nobody knew how to proceed. Brussels can harmonise everything except the harmonisation, and so a continent that cannot agree on noon presses on toward ever-closer union.
8. A 50,000 euro prize and a sermon
On 25 October the Parliament awarded its annual Sakharov Prize, worth 50,000 euros, to the imprisoned Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, a genuinely brave man pressed into service as the backdrop for the institution's yearly festival of self-congratulation. The award ceremony, with its certificate and cheque, would follow in December, because a sermon is not complete without a second sermon.
9. One offence to rule them all
On 23 October the Parliament and Council adopted a directive on combating money laundering by criminal law, harmonising the definition of the offence across the whole Union and ordering every member state to set a maximum prison term of at least four years, with twenty-two categories of predicate crime helpfully prescribed from above. Twenty-eight legal traditions, some of them many centuries old, were told that their own definitions of a crime were no longer their own to write.
Enjoyed this post?
Well, you could share the post with others, follow me with RSS Feeds and/or send me a comment via email.
Tags
Category:
Year: