Eurobloat #0161 • September 2023
September is the month the caravan returns to Strasbourg, the President delivers her annual sermon, and the Union remembers all the things it still wishes to control. This particular September it managed migration, electric cars, your phone battery and the truth itself, with the usual results.
Folly of the Month: Ten thousand arrivals, and a cheque to Tunis
Between 12 and 14 September more than seven thousand people landed in small boats on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a place of around six thousand residents, taking the month's arrivals past ten thousand. The Union's answer was a ten-point plan, much of it recycled, and the promise to honour the deal it signed in July handing Tunisia one hundred and five million euros to manage the border that Brussels itself cannot. The open frontier remains the article of faith; the autocrat in Tunis is merely the contractor hired to keep the faithful from noticing it does not work. Member states, who were neither consulted properly nor reassured, were left to wonder why a Union that grades them on the rule of law is so relaxed about who it pays to enforce its own.
1. The President declares war on cheap cars
In her State of the Union address on 13 September, Ursula von der Leyen announced an anti-subsidy investigation into electric vehicles made in China, on the grounds that they are kept artificially cheap by state support. The Commission, which spends its days subsidising European industry, has detected the outrage of a rival doing the same, and proposes to protect the European motorist from the indignity of an affordable car.
2. A binding target, handed down from above
On 12 September Parliament approved the revised Renewable Energy Directive by 470 votes to 120, raising the EU-wide renewables target to 42.5 per cent by 2030, with a further nudge toward 45. Twenty-seven national energy mixes, each with its own geography and grid, are now to be steered by a single figure set in Brussels, which is what is meant when the Union says it is listening to member states.
3. The tenth hike, and still no apology
On 14 September the European Central Bank raised its key rates for the tenth meeting in a row, lifting the deposit rate to a record 4 per cent. The institution that spent years insisting inflation was transitory now demonstrates its grip on prices by squeezing every mortgage holder on the continent, and expects to be thanked for the firmness.
4. Brussels appoints itself arbiter of truth
On 26 September Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova presented a report naming X as the platform with the largest ratio of disinformation, and reminded everyone of the consequences awaiting those who do not police speech to the Union's satisfaction. The body that cannot agree on a migration policy is confident it can identify falsehood on a social network, and intends to make that confidence legally binding.
5. The Digital Services Act flexes
Having received the first systemic risk assessments from the largest platforms in late August, the Commission spent September beginning to enforce the Digital Services Act, opening dialogues, demanding information and preparing the machinery of scrutiny. A continent that once prized free expression now has officials grading the algorithms of private companies, which is progress of a sort.
→ digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
6. By order: thou shalt change thy own battery
The new ecodesign rules for smartphones and tablets, adopted in the summer and grinding through September, decree repairability scores, mandated spare parts and, under the parallel Batteries Regulation, user-replaceable batteries. The Union that cannot replace its own failed policies has found the time to legislate how a citizen replaces the cell in a telephone.
→ single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu
7. A rescue package for the industry it overregulated
In the same address, the President promised a European Wind Power Package to fast-track permits and prop up a sector buckling under inflation and, conveniently unmentioned, years of permitting rules written by the very people now riding to the rescue. The fire brigade arrives, takes a bow, and declines to mention who built the house from kindling.
8. More seats at the table nobody asked to enlarge
Parliament moved in September to approve raising its membership for the next term from 705 seats to 720, with fifteen new places shared among twelve countries. The Union's instinct, faced with any problem, is to grow: more members, more salaries, more offices, and the serene assumption that representation improves with headcount.
9. Synthetic fuel by decree
Parliament also took up the ReFuelEU Aviation initiative, mandating rising shares of sustainable and synthetic aviation fuels at EU airports, regardless of whether such fuels yet exist in the quantities required. The Union has discovered that a thing can be willed into being by regulation, and that the gap between the target and the tanker is somebody else's problem.
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