Eurobloat #0137 • September 2021
September brought the annual State of the Union sermon, a new charger law, a new health agency, fresh billions of borrowed money, and the small embarrassment of two member states losing a submarine contract to Brexit Britain. The soul of Europe, we were assured, has never been in better shape.
Folly of the Month: The Commission picks the shape of your charger
On 23 September the Commission tabled a proposal to make USB-C the mandatory charging port for phones, tablets, cameras, headphones, speakers and handheld consoles sold across the Union. The supreme political project of post-war Europe, having failed to produce a common army, a common foreign policy or a common border, has at last united around the urgent question of which hole your phone plugs into. Brussels justified the law by citing the 2.4 billion euros that consumers supposedly waste on spare chargers each year, a figure that conveniently ignores that the market had already converged on USB-C without anyone in Strasbourg lifting a finger. By the time the rule arrives in 2024 it will standardise a port the industry had standardised by itself, which is rather the point.
1. State of the Union: the cure for everything is more Europe
On 15 September Ursula von der Leyen delivered her annual address in Strasbourg, calling for a European Health Union, a European Defence Union, a European Cyber Defence Policy and the "soul of the Green Deal", which turned out to be an architecture project. Whatever the problem, the diagnosis is always the same and the prescription never shrinks.
2. A brand-new health super-agency nobody voted for
On 16 September the Commission launched HERA, the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority, handing it a mandate over Union-wide medical stockpiles and a budget of six billion euros to 2027. Rather than admit that national health systems run health, Brussels quietly bolted another floor onto its own headquarters and called it preparedness.
3. The Commission becomes a bond trader
On 7 September the Commission adopted its NextGenerationEU green bond framework, the prelude to borrowing up to 250 billion euros in green debt on behalf of the whole Union. Joint borrowing was sold as a one-off emergency measure, and like every one-off emergency measure in Brussels it now comes with a marketing brochure and a multi-year issuance plan.
4. A Cyber Resilience Act to regulate every connected gadget
In her 15 September address von der Leyen announced a European Cyber Resilience Act to impose common security standards on connected products across the Union. "If everything is connected, everything can be hacked," she warned, which is true, and also true of every regulation that promises to fix it by writing rules for your toaster from Brussels.
5. Poland asks who is actually in charge
On 22 September Poland's Constitutional Tribunal again adjourned its case on whether national or EU law has primacy, pushing the decision to 30 September amid a deepening row with Brussels. The mere suggestion that a national constitution might outrank the European Court of Justice is treated in Brussels as heresy rather than the ordinary question a sovereign country is entitled to ask.
6. AUKUS leaves the Union talking to itself
On 15 September Britain, the United States and Australia announced the AUKUS pact, scrapping a 56 billion euro French submarine contract and catching Brussels entirely off guard. The EU's foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell could only urge "less confrontation" from the sidelines in New York, a fine demonstration of the common foreign policy that exists chiefly on letterhead.
7. Lukashenko sends migrants, and the open-borders club has no answer
Through September Belarus funnelled thousands of migrants towards Lithuania, Poland and Latvia, with over 3,800 attempts recorded on the Polish border in the first three weeks of the month alone, in a deliberate act of hybrid warfare by Minsk. The frontline states moved to fence and police their borders, which is precisely the sovereign self-defence Brussels spent years lecturing them against.
8. The digital levy goes quietly into the drawer
Having loudly promised a Union-wide digital levy on Big Tech, the Commission spent the autumn keeping it shelved after Washington made plain it would not tolerate a tax aimed at American firms. The grand plan for an EU-level tax on technology companies, dressed up as fairness, survives exactly as long as a phone call from the US Treasury permits.
9. Parliament grades the member states again
On 14 September the European Parliament adopted a resolution on LGBTIQ rights demanding the Commission discipline Hungary and Poland, two days before passing another on media freedom in Poland. Whatever the merits of the cause, the reflex is unchanged: the chamber in Strasbourg appoints itself headmaster and the member states are summoned, once more, to the front of the class.
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