Eurobloat #0140 • December 2021
December is the month when most institutions slow down for the holidays. The European Commission instead used the quiet to draft a tax, relabel reality, and slip its most contentious file out on New Year's Eve.
Folly of the Month: A green label, delivered on New Year's Eve
On 31 December 2021, while the rest of the continent was opening wine, the Commission circulated a draft delegated act proposing to classify certain fossil gas and nuclear projects as "sustainable" investments under its green taxonomy. There was to be no public consultation. The expert platform was given until 12 January, roughly eight working days across the holidays, to respond to one of the most contested financial files of the decade. If a policy is sound, you announce it in daylight. If you send it out at midnight on 31 December, you already know what people would say.
→ ipe.com
1. An EU-wide tax, just in time for Christmas
On 22 December the Commission tabled a directive to impose a 15 per cent minimum effective tax rate on large groups, dressed up as faithful implementation of an OECD deal. Tax rates are the one lever member states still pull for themselves, which is precisely why Brussels would like them harmonised and supervised from the centre.
2. Brussels decides who your employer is
On 9 December the Commission proposed the Platform Work Directive, with a tidy checklist that would presume millions of self-employed couriers and drivers to be employees instead. By the Commission's own sums some 5.5 million people could be reclassified, whether they asked for it or not, with a new layer of algorithmic supervision attached.
3. Parliament sharpens the Big Tech cudgel
On 15 December the Parliament adopted its position on the Digital Markets Act, voting 642 to 8 to wave it through, then widened the net to cover browsers, voice assistants and connected televisions for good measure. Fines were pencilled in at up to 20 per cent of global turnover, because nothing says fair competition like a penalty large enough to end a company.
4. The open border admits it needs a wall
On 1 December the Commission proposed temporary measures letting Poland, Latvia and Lithuania derogate from the usual asylum rules at the Belarus frontier, stretching registration deadlines and allowing border processing. The frontline states had been asking for exactly this; the same Brussels that lectures capitals about solidarity discovered the value of a hard border only once Minsk started bussing people to it.
5. The schoolmaster prepares the cane
On 2 December the Court's Advocate General advised judges to throw out Poland and Hungary's challenge to the budget conditionality mechanism, the tool that lets Brussels withhold money from members it grades as misbehaving. Cash with conditions attached is how the centre disciplines the periphery, and the opinion duly cleared the way.
6. Three hundred billion to feel important
On 1 December Ursula von der Leyen unveiled Global Gateway, a plan to mobilise up to 300 billion euros to rival China's Belt and Road and offer the world "links, not dependencies". The figure is mostly hoped-for private money rather than committed cash, which makes it the perfect Brussels project: a vast headline number and a brand to polish.
7. The march towards an army of its own
At the 16 December summit, EU leaders agreed to press on with the Strategic Compass and the ambition to "act autonomously" on security and defence, with endorsement booked for March. Twenty-seven capitals already have armies and an alliance that works; what is missing, apparently, is a Brussels co-ordinator to sit above them.
8. A new exposure limit for everyone, everywhere
On 16 December the Council and Parliament struck a deal to extend the carcinogens directive, adding fresh EU-wide limits for acrylonitrile, nickel compounds and benzene and widening the scope to reprotoxic substances. Member states have run their own workplace safety regimes for decades; the value added is that the threshold is now set in Brussels rather than at home.
9. A prize handed out at a safe distance
On 15 December the Parliament awarded its Sakharov Prize to the imprisoned Alexei Navalny, his daughter collecting the medal in Strasbourg. Honouring a brave man is fine; the EU's habit of conferring prizes on dissidents it cannot help, then returning to business with the regimes jailing them, is the part worth noting.
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