Eurobloat #0160 • August 2023
While much of the Continent was on holiday, the Commission spent August quietly arming itself: a speech regulator for the world's biggest platforms, a carbon levy on imports, and a brand new power to second-guess private deals. The borders, meanwhile, were arming nobody.
Folly of the Month: Brussels appoints itself referee of the internet
On 25 August the Digital Services Act began applying to the nineteen largest platforms and search engines, handing the Commission the job of deciding which "systemic risks" the rest of us are exposed to online. Firms such as Google, Meta, TikTok and X must now run annual risk assessments, mitigate "disinformation" to Brussels' satisfaction, open their data to "vetted researchers", and face fines of up to six per cent of global turnover if officials are displeased. It is a remarkable thing to watch an unelected executive declare itself the arbiter of what may be amplified and what must be suppressed, and to call this keeping us safe. The platforms are mostly American, the rules are entirely European, and the appetite for more is bottomless.
1. A new import tax dressed up as a spreadsheet
On 17 August the Commission adopted the implementing regulation for its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, the EU's levy on imported steel, cement, aluminium, fertiliser, hydrogen and electricity. From October importers must file quarterly emissions reports, with the bill itself to follow, because nothing says free trade like a carbon tariff at the frontier.
2. The Commission grants itself a veto over your takeover
All summer the final rules for the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, published in the Official Journal on 12 July, loomed over August, requiring companies to notify mergers and big public tenders and to disclose three years of "foreign financial contributions". From 12 October the Commission can probe, delay and unwind private deals it dislikes, a sweeping new power over commerce that nobody voted for.
3. The Tunisia bargain meets the sea
The 105 million euros pledged to Tunis in July to "stem irregular departures" was drawing fire all through August, with rights groups noting the Commission had signed up without so much as a human rights assessment. Brussels lectures the world on values, then writes cheques to a regime accused of dumping migrants in the desert, and the boats keep coming anyway.
→ ecre.org
4. A hundred thousand arrivals, and a plan to follow later
By 16 August more than 101,000 people had reached Italy by sea, up 107 per cent on the same period a year before, with the tiny island of Lampedusa bearing the brunt. The EU's answer would arrive in September as a "10-point plan", which is roughly one point for every ten thousand people the open-borders model had already failed to account for.
→ ansa.it
5. The light bulb police clock off
By September the Commission's RoHS phase-out finishes the job of banning compact and tubular fluorescent lamps across the Union, the latest household fitting to be legislated out of existence from Brussels. First they came for the powerful vacuum cleaners, then the bright light bulbs, and somewhere a directorate-general counts this as progress.
6. You can run but you cannot hide, says the speech commissioner
Commissioner Thierry Breton spent the summer reminding X that, code of practice or not, fighting "disinformation" became a legal obligation under the DSA from 25 August, with his teams "ready for enforcement". An EU official threatening a private platform that it cannot escape him is precisely the menacing tone one hopes never to hear from a public servant.
7. A digital wallet with a backdoor for governments
As the eIDAS trilogues ground on through the summer, hundreds of academics and security researchers warned that the digital identity scheme would let any member state designate cryptographic keys that browsers must trust, handing governments the technical means to intercept encrypted web traffic. The EU wants to issue you an identity wallet and keep a spare key to your front door.
8. Chat Control refuses to die
The Commission's plan to mandate scanning of private messages, including the client-side variety that breaks encryption from the inside, rumbled on through August, splitting member states and alarming every cryptographer who looked at it. Mass surveillance of every citizen's conversations is a strange way to defend a free society, but Brussels keeps reaching for it.
→ edri.org
9. Brussels takes charge of your batteries
On 17 August the EU's new Batteries Regulation entered into force, decreeing carbon footprint declarations, recycled content quotas and a rule that the battery in your phone must one day be removable and replaceable by hand. From cobalt sourcing to the back of your handset, there is now no corner of a product too small for a directorate-general to legislate.
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