Eurobloat #0113 • September 2019
September brought a new Commission stuffed with vice-presidents, a court that decided how far its writ should run, and a central bank firing the last of its ammunition on the way out of the door. The Union spent the month deciding what Europeans may read, remember, and pay for, which is rather a lot for one autumn.
Folly of the Month: The court that drew its own borders
On 24 September the Court of Justice ruled in Google v CNIL that the "right to be forgotten" does not yet have to be enforced across the entire planet, which sounds like a victory for free speech until you read the next paragraph. The same judges decided that search results must be scrubbed across every single member state, and that Google should deploy geo-blocking to "seriously discourage" curious Europeans from wandering onto a foreign version of the page. So the Union cannot quite censor the global internet, but it can build a wall around the bits it controls and call it data protection. A continent that fought for decades to tear down barriers to information has discovered it rather likes putting them back up, so long as Brussels holds the trowel.
1. A union that strives for more vice-presidents
On 10 September Ursula von der Leyen unveiled her new Commission, complete with three executive vice-presidents, five further vice-presidents, and the slogan "for a Union that strives for more". More what, precisely, was left unsaid, though the proliferation of senior titles offers a clue.
2. Defending the European way of life, whatever that is
The very same announcement handed Margaritis Schinas a portfolio for "Protecting our European Way of Life", covering migration and security, which immediately drew accusations of menace and within weeks would be quietly softened to "Promoting". Even Jean-Claude Juncker disliked it, which is a remarkable achievement given how much of it he built.
3. The Parliament grades the twentieth century
On 19 September MEPs passed, by 535 votes to 66, a resolution on "European remembrance" that condemned both Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism and pinned the start of the war on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Whatever the merits of the history, the spectacle of the Strasbourg chamber issuing official verdicts on the meaning of the past confirms that the Union now considers memory itself a matter for the legislature.
4. Draghi empties the magazine on his way out
On 12 September, weeks before handing over to Christine Lagarde, Mario Draghi cut rates deeper below zero and restarted open-ended bond purchases. Eight years of stimulus had not delivered the promised inflation, so naturally the answer was more of the same, charged to savers who never voted for any of it.
→ cnbc.com
5. Strong customer authentication breaks the shops
On 14 September the EU's mandatory two-step payment rules came into force, at which point the regulators discovered that most of the continent's retailers were nowhere near ready. The Banking Authority promptly blessed a delay running all the way to the end of 2020, which is a curious way to describe a deadline that arrived, broke checkout pages, and was then waved through anyway.
6. The Commission goes to court over Ireland's own taxes
In September the General Court spent two days hearing Apple and Ireland appeal Brussels' demand for thirteen billion euros in back tax that Ireland itself never asked for. The Commission insists it is merely policing state aid, while Dublin politely points out that levying corporation tax used to be a national affair.
→ rte.ie
7. The link tax meets reality
France having become the first to enact the Union's copyright directive, Google announced in late September that it would simply stop showing news snippets rather than pay the new "link tax". The masterstroke designed to make Silicon Valley fund European newspapers ended up depriving European newspapers of clicks, which the architects of Article 15 somehow failed to foresee.
8. Four capitals quietly redraw migration policy in Valletta
On 23 September Germany, France, Italy and Malta signed a "joint declaration of intent" on a temporary mechanism to relocate migrants picked up at sea, with the Commission hovering approvingly nearby. It is neither a treaty nor a law, just four governments and an informal pledge, yet it managed to roughly multiply the monthly relocation numbers, which tells you how seriously the rules everyone else must obey are taken.
9. Parliament insists Britain keep the rope it is trying to escape
On 18 September the Strasbourg chamber resolved, by 544 votes to 126, that it would refuse consent to any Withdrawal Agreement stripped of the Irish backstop, the very arrangement that had already sunk the deal three times in Westminster. A continent forever lecturing others about respecting referendum results spent the month demanding that a nation which voted to leave first sign a treaty binding it indefinitely to rules it would no longer help write.
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