Eurobloat #0155 • March 2023
March was the month the Commission announced two new industrial regulations and called the result less regulation, while the Parliament voted to put the energy-class of your living room under European supervision.
Folly of the Month: Two new Acts, sold as cutting red tape
On 16 March the Commission unveiled the Net-Zero Industry Act and the Critical Raw Materials Act, twin proposals to "simplify" the path to clean technology by adding faster permitting, EU benchmarks, "strategic projects" and a European Critical Raw Materials Board to oversee them. The simplification consists of new targets, a new list of sixteen strategic materials, new monitoring duties and a new layer of Brussels coordination of what factories member states should build. Nobody asked why Europe lost its raw-material and manufacturing base in the first place, nor who wrote the rules that did it. The cure for too much industrial policy, it turns out, is more industrial policy, this time written from Berlaymont.
1. Your house, graded by Brussels
On 14 March the Parliament voted, 343 to 216, to make every home reach energy class E by 2030 and class D by 2033, turning the renovation of private dwellings into an EU-mandated obligation. The Continent that cannot agree a budget now proposes to inspect your loft insulation.
2. A Right to Repair, and a fresh stack of duties to go with it
On 22 March the Commission proposed a repair directive obliging manufacturers to mend products for years after sale, with reparability requirements, a repair information form and a European online matchmaking platform. A sensible idea about throwing less away arrives, as ever, wrapped in forms, registers and a portal.
3. The ECB raises rates into a bank run
On 16 March, with Credit Suisse collapsing and shares down as much as thirty per cent, the European Central Bank pressed ahead with a half-point hike that took the main refinancing rate to 3.5 per cent and the deposit rate to 3 per cent, and Christine Lagarde pronounced the euro area banking sector "resilient". Reassurance delivered mid-panic is a Brussels speciality.
→ bis.org
4. A wallet for every citizen, a number to match
On 16 March the Parliament confirmed its position on the eIDAS revision, 418 to 103, clearing the European Digital Identity Wallet to head into negotiations. The original proposal carried, in the words of its critics, a unique and persistent identifier for every human and no safeguard against the issuing governments watching everything done with it. A single ID to access the Continent, and Brussels assures you nobody will ever look.
5. Still no Pfizer texts
On 23 March the European Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, again rebuked the Commission for refusing to release the text messages between Ursula von der Leyen and the chief executive of Pfizer over the largest vaccine purchase in the bloc's history. The institution that wants to read your messages cannot find its president's own.
6. A directive to police the word "green"
On 22 March the Commission proposed the Green Claims Directive, requiring firms to substantiate and have verified any voluntary environmental claim before printing it on a label. Brussels, having spent years demanding ever-greener marketing, now proposes a permission regime for the adjectives it asked for.
7. The combustion-engine ban, minus the votes
The 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel cars stalled in March when Germany, backed by Italy, Poland and Bulgaria, refused to ratify the deal it had already agreed unless e-fuels were exempted, forcing the Council to delay its own done deal. A flagship law unravelling because its largest member read the small print is the system working exactly as advertised.
8. Renewables target raised to 42.5 per cent
On 30 March negotiators agreed to lift the binding EU renewables share to 42.5 per cent of energy use by 2030, with a further indicative push towards 45 per cent. The number rises every revision; the means of hitting it remains, as always, somebody else's problem.
9. Lectures for Tunis, deals to follow
On 16 March the Parliament passed a resolution denouncing President Saied's "authoritarian drift" in Tunisia, mere months before the same EU signed a migration memorandum handing his coastguard money to stop the boats. Brussels condemns the regime in the spring and pays it in the summer, and calls the contradiction a values-based foreign policy.
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