Eurobloat #0104 • December 2018
December gave us a court ruling on how to stay, a tax on companies that have not done anything wrong, and a Commission so determined to police your reading that it set aside cash to do it. Season of goodwill, Brussels style.
Folly of the Month: The Court tells Britain how it is allowed to change its mind
On 10 December the Court of Justice ruled in Wightman that a member state may unilaterally revoke an Article 50 notice and stay in the Union on its existing terms, opt-outs and rebate intact. Framed as a gift to the wavering, it was in truth a reminder of the system's deepest instinct: the exit must always be a door that swings shut behind you. The judges did not hurry to make leaving easier; they hurried, in three months flat, to make staying simpler. Britain, having watched the Court explain how generously it might be allowed to abandon its own referendum, was entitled to feel that the case had proven the point of leaving rather than the case for remaining.
1. Italy submits, deficit procedure quietly shelved
After weeks of the Commission as headmaster and Rome as the boy at the back, Italy trimmed its numbers and the threatened excessive deficit procedure was dropped just before Christmas. A sovereign budget, rewritten until Brussels approved the homework, then graded pass.
2. A 5 million euro plan to decide what is true
On 5 December the Commission unveiled its Action Plan against Disinformation, complete with a Rapid Alert System and 5 million euros to raise awareness before the European elections. Nothing says confidence in the voter like a publicly funded office to tell him which news is real.
3. The historic eurozone budget arrives as a memo
The grand Franco-German plan for a eurozone treasury came to the 14 December Euro Summit and left as a "budgetary instrument for convergence and competitiveness", with the actual features to be decided sometime in June 2019. A transfer union promised, then shrunk to a placeholder and a follow-up meeting.
4. Parliament votes to tax companies for being digital
On 13 December MEPs adopted two reports backing a digital services tax, taxing revenue rather than profit and inventing a "significant digital presence" to be taxed wherever Brussels decides one exists. A new EU-level levy dressed up as fairness, needing only unanimity it will never get.
5. A 2019 budget that only grows
The same week, Parliament signed off the 2019 budget at 165.8 billion euros in commitments, a tidy 3.2 per cent above the year before. In an institution forever lecturing members on restraint, the one line that never bends is its own.
6. The straw ban reaches provisional triumph
On 19 December the Presidency and Parliament struck a provisional deal on the Single-Use Plastics Directive, banning plastic straws, cutlery, plates and cotton buds and setting recycled-content quotas for bottles. Twenty-eight nations, one continent-wide verdict on the cocktail straw.
7. A high-level group drafts ethics for the machines
On 18 December the Commission's expert group published its draft Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI and opened a consultation. Before Europe had built much artificial intelligence worth the name, it had assembled a committee to grade its conscience.
→ digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
8. Borders "back to pre-crisis levels", credit duly claimed
The 14 December European Council declared illegal crossings down to pre-crisis levels and attributed it to external border control and deals with countries of transit. The hard work of keeping people out is exactly what the open-borders project spent years insisting was neither possible nor decent.
9. A diesel-fume limit for 15.6 million workers, from Strasbourg
Parliament approved a revision of the carcinogens directive setting a single EU diesel-exhaust limit of 0.05 mg per cubic metre, said to cover 15.6 million workers. The air a garage mechanic in Lisbon may breathe, now decided in a chamber a thousand miles away.
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