Eurobloat #0154 • February 2023
February brought us a vote to ban the petrol engine, a summit that discovered borders exist, and a plan to win a subsidy race by joining it. Twenty-eight days, and not one of them spent doing less.
Folly of the Month: The engine is hereby abolished
On 14 February, by the romantic margin of 340 votes to 279, the European Parliament approved the rule that new cars and vans must emit zero CO2 from 2035, which is the polite way of saying that the internal combustion engine is to be legislated out of existence. A central committee in Brussels has decided, on behalf of every driver from Lisbon to Tallinn, which technology they will be permitted to buy in twelve years, and the supposed market will simply do as it is told. The vote was close, the industry was nervous, and the people who will pay for it were not consulted. Within three years the Commission would quietly start unpicking the very ban it celebrated here, which tells you how carefully it was thought through.
1. A summit remembers that borders are a thing
At the special European Council on 9 February, leaders sat up past midnight and concluded, to general astonishment, that the external border ought to be protected and that failed asylum seekers ought to be returned. This is welcome, though one wonders what the open-borders enthusiasts thought they were building all these years. The row over whether EU money could pay for fences was left unresolved, so Brussels will fund the watchtowers and cameras but not the wall they watch over.
2. We shall win the subsidy race by entering it
On 1 February the Commission unveiled its Green Deal Industrial Plan, a response to America's Inflation Reduction Act that consists of loosening the state-aid rules Brussels spent decades tightening. Having lectured everyone about distortion and fair competition, the Commission now invites member states to shovel money at favoured green firms, which several capitals warned would spark exactly the unchecked subsidy race it claims to deplore.
3. The ECB raises rates and shrugs at the bill
On 2 February the European Central Bank lifted interest rates by another 50 basis points and promised the same again in March, with Christine Lagarde explaining that price pressures remained strong. Inflation stood at 8.5 per cent, the institution that printed money for years now charges everyone for the consequences, and nobody in Frankfurt appears to face any awkward questions about how the fire started.
→ cnbc.com
4. Rules for the adverts you are allowed to see
In the first February plenary the Parliament set its position on the regulation policing the targeting and transparency of political advertising, prohibiting the use of certain personal data in online targeting. Brussels, never knowingly under-regulated, now wishes to supervise how citizens are persuaded during elections, which is a curious hobby for an institution forever complaining that the public ignores it.
5. A sovereign satellite constellation for the sovereignty fund
The Parliament approved IRIS2, a new EU satellite connectivity programme running to 2027, so that Europe may depend less on foreign systems and more on its own. The bloc that cannot agree on a budget, a migration policy or a single language now intends to run its own constellation in orbit, because nothing says efficiency like a publicly procured space project.
6. The wallet that knows your name
On 10 February the Commission published version 1.0 of the architecture for the EU Digital Identity Wallet, the technical scaffolding for a single bloc-wide identity app, while its committees rubber-stamped the eIDAS revision behind it. A continent-wide digital ID, held on your phone, blessed by Brussels, is precisely the sort of convenience that sounds harmless until you remember who gets to decide what it is required for.
→ digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
7. A peek inside everyone's bank account
In the first February plenary the LIBE committee confirmed it would open negotiations to amend Directive 2019/1153 and widen authorities' access to the centralised registries of bank accounts. The list of officials entitled to know who holds which account only ever grows, and the word "access" is doing a great deal of quiet work in that sentence.
8. Acceding to a convention, because more accession is always the answer
In the second February plenary the Parliament adopted a report backing EU accession to the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, a treaty its member states had been perfectly capable of signing themselves. Where a nation could simply ratify a thing, Brussels prefers to ratify it again at the EU level, so that the Union may take the credit and a fresh layer of competence may quietly attach itself.
9. Sermons for Kyiv, summit for the cameras
The early-February session staged an EU-Ukraine summit and a resolution promising more military, economic and humanitarian support and a comprehensive recovery package. The sentiment is fine, but the spectacle of an enlargement-shy bloc dangling membership it has no real intention of granting at speed is the sort of generosity that costs nothing and commits to less.
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