Eurobloat #0152 • December 2022
December 2022 was the festive season in which the Parliament that grades the rest of the world on transparency had a million euros in cash carried through its own corridors. Between bribery raids it found time to put a carbon price on heating your home, so the year ended on a warm note.
Folly of the Month: A suitcase of cash and a Vice-President in custody
On 9 December Belgian police raided properties across Brussels, seized more than a million euros in cash, and arrested a sitting Vice-President of the European Parliament, the Greek MEP Eva Kaili, along with several others. Prosecutors allege Qatar and Morocco funnelled bribes to MEPs to buy favourable treatment, and one of the accused was reportedly caught at a hotel with a suitcase stuffed full of notes. The Parliament voted to strip Kaili of her vice-presidency and she spent Christmas in a cell, which is the closest the institution has come to genuine accountability in years. This is the assembly that issues human-rights resolutions to the planet, now explaining why its officers needed bin bags for the money.
1. A carbon price on your petrol tank and your boiler
On 18 December negotiators agreed a new emissions trading scheme, ETS II, that from 2027 will put a carbon price on fuel for road transport and home heating. Brussels has decided the way to help households through an energy crisis is to charge them to fill the car and warm the house, then hand a fraction of the proceeds back through a Social Climate Fund as if it were a gift.
2. A border tax run from Brussels
On 13 December the Council and Parliament struck a provisional deal on the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, a tariff on imported steel, cement, aluminium, fertiliser, electricity and hydrogen. Governance, the press release cheerfully notes, will be centralised with most activities managed by the Commission, which is the entire EU project summarised in a single clause.
3. Brussels grades Hungary and docks its pocket money
On 12 December the Council voted to suspend 6.3 billion euros in funds destined for Hungary, citing rule-of-law concerns over procurement and corruption. The principle that an unelected centre may freeze a member state's money until it behaves is presented as the rule of law, rather than the rule of Brussels, and the timing alongside Qatargate was exquisite.
4. Schengen waved Croatia through and slammed the gate on the rest
On 8 December the Council admitted Croatia to the passport-free Schengen area while Austria and the Netherlands vetoed Romania and Bulgaria over migration and corruption worries. So the open-borders club, faced with members who actually want to control who crosses, discovered that even Brussels keeps a lock on the door when it suits.
5. The gas price cap that is not a cap
On 19 December energy ministers agreed a market correction mechanism that triggers only if the month-ahead price exceeds 180 euros per megawatt hour for three days and sits 35 euros above a global benchmark. After two months of wrangling the EU produced a cap so hedged with conditions that officials had to insist it is not a cap, which is the most honest thing said all month.
→ cnbc.com
6. The Commission decides where you should buy your second-hand sofa
On 19 December the Commission sent Meta a Statement of Objections accusing it of unfairly tying Facebook Marketplace to Facebook. Having spent a fortnight failing to police bribery in its own building, Brussels turned its full forensic energy to the grave threat of people selling used furniture to their neighbours.
7. Fifty thousand firms handed a new homework assignment
On 14 December the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive was signed into law, dragging an estimated 50,000 companies into detailed sustainability disclosure. Brussels created the entire reporting burden, then branded the result progress, and somewhere an army of consultants began booking holidays.
8. The transatlantic data deal nobody believes will survive
On 13 December the Commission published its draft adequacy decision for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, the third attempt at a data pact after the courts struck down the previous two. The privacy campaigner Max Schrems promptly announced he would challenge it, calling the deal a copy of a copy, and the legal ping-pong rolls cheerfully into another round at taxpayers' expense.
9. A global tax rate, ratified by the Union that wants its own taxes
On 14 December the Council adopted the directive imposing a 15 per cent minimum tax on large multinationals, after Hungary's long resistance was finally overcome. An organisation forever hunting for own resources and EU-level levies was delighted to enshrine a floor on what nations may tax, one more decision shifted away from the capitals that answer to voters.
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