Eurobloat #0156 • April 2023
April was the month the Union managed to build a machine for reading your text messages, a tax on your petrol, and a fresh fine for an American company, then went looking for a friendly dictator to mind the borders. A productive thirty days, if you measure productivity by the volume of liberty surrendered.
Folly of the Month: The EU's own lawyers admit the message scanner is probably illegal
On 26 April the Council Legal Service, the in-house solicitors who advise the member-state governments, delivered a written opinion on the Commission's so-called Chat Control proposal to scan everyone's private communications for child abuse material. Their verdict was that the scheme carried a serious risk of being found to compromise the essence of the rights to privacy and data protection, that it threatened encryption, and that it amounted to general and indiscriminate access to the content of personal messages. When the lawyers paid to defend a law tell you it breaks the most basic rights you have, the honest move is to bin it. Brussels instead kept it on the table and went on insisting that surveilling four hundred million people was a proportionate response.
→ edri.org
1. Parliament votes for a carbon tax at the border
On 18 April the Parliament waved through the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism by 487 votes to 81, a new levy on imported steel, cement, aluminium, fertiliser and electricity dressed up as climate policy. It is a tariff Brussels is not allowed to call a tariff, collected by an institution forever insisting it believes in free trade.
→ icis.com
2. And a second carbon tax on your petrol and your boiler
The same 18 April package created ETS II, a brand-new emissions market that will put a carbon price on the diesel in your car and the gas in your heating from 2027. The Commission's own figures concede heating fuel could rise by up to thirty per cent, so naturally there is a new EU fund to hand a little of your own money back to you afterwards.
3. A record fine for an American firm, route confirmed
Following the European Data Protection Board's binding decision of 13 April, the path was cleared for the largest GDPR penalty ever, a 1.2 billion euro fine on Meta, not for losing your data but for moving it to the United States under contracts the EU itself once approved. Punishing a company for obeying yesterday's rules under today's is a fine European tradition.
4. Seventeen platforms drafted into the new digital ministry
On 25 April the Commission designated its first nineteen Very Large Online Platforms and search engines under the Digital Services Act, from Amazon and Facebook to YouTube and Zalando. Brussels has decided which websites are too large to be left to their users and has appointed itself their content editor.
→ digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
5. Parliament confirms its grand plan to share out migrants
On 20 April MEPs confirmed their negotiating mandate on asylum and migration management, the centrepiece of a pact built on relocating arrivals around the bloc rather than stopping them at the frontier. Two decades of waving people in, and the Union's answer is a spreadsheet for distributing the consequences across capitals that never asked for them.
6. Off to Tunisia to outsource the border it would not defend
On 27 April Commissioner Ylva Johansson flew to Tunis to announce a stronger partnership on migration and anti-smuggling, the opening move toward a cash-for-borders deal with President Saied's government. Having lectured the world for years on open borders and human rights, Brussels discovered it would quite like a strongman to hold the line, provided the cheque clears.
7. The biggest medicines overhaul in twenty years lands with a thud
On 26 April the Commission unveiled its pharmaceutical package, the largest reform of EU medicines law in two decades, headlined by cutting the data protection period that rewards new drug research from eight years to six. Industry warned it would drive innovation out of Europe, which is a curious way to treat the one sector everybody claims to want to keep.
8. Your crypto wallet, now traceable on Brussels orders
On 20 April the Parliament approved its landmark crypto rulebook by 517 votes to 38, then waved through a companion law by 529 to 29 forcing crypto firms to identify their customers and attach a name to every transfer. The whole point of a self-hosted wallet was that it answered to its owner and nobody else, which is precisely why Brussels could not leave it alone.
9. The engine ban is signed, complete with the fudge that saved it
On 19 April the EU formally signed the 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel cars, salvaged only weeks earlier when Germany threatened to vote it down unless e-fuels were exempted. A flagship law that nearly collapsed over its own incoherence was rescued by a carve-out nobody can quite explain, then signed anyway as a triumph.
Enjoyed this post?
Well, you could share the post with others, follow me with RSS Feeds and/or send me a comment via email.
Tags
Category:
Year: