Eurobloat #0128 • December 2020
December 2020 was the month the Union decided that a pandemic was no reason to slow down, and that the cure for a continent in lockdown was more regulation of websites, more taxes flowing to Brussels, and a one-hour stopwatch on what you are allowed to read online. It also lost an actual member state, though you would struggle to find a press release admitting the lesson.
Folly of the Month: Brussels appoints itself referee of the entire internet
On 15 December the Commission unveiled the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, twin proposals to set new rules for how Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google may run their own platforms. The grand boast was "digital sovereignty", which in plain English means moving decisions about billions of posts and products from the firms that built the services to officials in Brussels who have built nothing. Threatened fines run to a tenth of global turnover for the largest "gatekeepers", which is the sort of figure you reach for when the point is power rather than competition. The wonders of a single market, it turns out, are best protected by a permanent inspectorate.
→ eff.org
1. The one-hour stopwatch on the internet
On 10 December the Council presidency and Parliament struck a provisional deal on terrorist content online, under which a platform that receives a removal order from any member state has sixty minutes to delete the material across the whole Union, on pain of fines up to four per cent of global turnover. A clock that fast leaves no room for second thoughts, which is precisely how mistakes about what is forbidden become permanent.
2. Brussels grants itself the power to tax plastic
On 16 December the three institutions signed an interinstitutional agreement complete with a roadmap to "new own resources", which is the gentle term for taxes that flow to Brussels rather than to national treasuries. First out of the gate, from January, was a levy on non-recycled plastic packaging, with a digital tax and a carbon border charge pencilled in to follow. The pandemic budget came with a habit it will not want to give up.
3. The rule-of-law veto bought off with a footnote
At the summit of 10 and 11 December the leaders ended the Hungarian and Polish veto of the €1.8 trillion budget and recovery fund, not by facing down the objection but by bolting on declarations promising that the new rule-of-law mechanism would be applied gently and only after the Court had blessed the guidelines. The money was unblocked, the principle was quietly diluted, and Brussels still calls this a victory for standards.
4. An all-night summit to declare a number
The same summit ground on into the small hours so that twenty-seven governments could agree to cut emissions by "at least 55 per cent" by 2030, a binding target announced before anyone had worked out who pays for it or how. Setting the figure first and the plan later is one way to govern, though it is the way you would expect from people who treat the headline as the achievement.
5. A new sanctions list for an old partner
The December summit also resolved to draw up a list of Turkish targets for sanctions over the gas stand-off with Greece and Cyprus, the latest twist in a relationship in which Ankara is alternately the indispensable border guard holding back migrants and the provocateur to be punished. A foreign policy that cannot decide whether a country is friend or threat tends to end up being neither feared nor trusted.
6. The Commission appoints itself guardian of democracy
On 3 December the Commission launched its European Democracy Action Plan, a programme to police elections, prop up the media and combat "disinformation" by turning the voluntary code on online platforms into a framework of obligations and monitoring. When the institution that is itself unelected by any voter announces that it will safeguard your democracy and decide what counts as disinformation, the polite response is to ask who appointed it.
7. A 700-page rulebook for the humble battery
On 10 December the Commission tabled a regulation on batteries and waste batteries, replacing a directive from 2006 with mandatory requirements covering every cell placed on the market, from the one in your watch to the pack in an electric car. The green transition apparently cannot proceed until each AA has its own carbon footprint declaration and Brussels has a say in how it is recycled.
8. The vaccine arrives, eventually
On 21 December the European Medicines Agency finally recommended conditional authorisation of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, several weeks after Britain, newly free of the joint procurement scheme it had escaped, had already begun jabbing arms. Collective bargaining was sold as the smart, solidaristic option, but the lesson of December was that a slower queue is still a slower queue.
9. The member that got away
On Christmas Eve, after ten months of brinkmanship, the Commission and the United Kingdom agreed a Trade and Cooperation Agreement with no tariffs and no quotas, eight days before the transition expired. Brussels spent four years insisting that life outside the club would be unthinkable, then signed a deal proving the opposite, and the lesson that a country can leave and prosper is the one entry in this list nobody in the Berlaymont will be celebrating.
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