Eurobloat #0165 • January 2024
January opened with the EU mourning Jacques Delors and closed with it being sued by its own Parliament, blackmailing a member state on paper, and surrounded by angry men in tractors. A productive start to the year for the project that always knows best.
Folly of the Month: Brussels writes down the plan to wreck Hungary's economy, in case anyone forgot it was a club
Ahead of the February summit on Ukraine aid, EU officials drew up a strategy document, leaked to the Financial Times, setting out how to sabotage Hungary's economy and spook its investors if Viktor Orban dared use his treaty-given veto. So this is the union of equals: cross Brussels and it will quietly target your "specific weaknesses" and undermine confidence in your currency. Hungary called it blackmail, which for once is not a stretch, and the lesson for every capital is plain, namely that the veto exists only until the EU decides it is inconvenient. Nothing says shared values like a written threat to crash a member's economy.
1. The Parliament sues the Commission for caving to the country it was blackmailing
In a triumph of internal coherence, MEPs voted to take the Commission to court for releasing 10.2 billion euros in previously frozen funds to Hungary, money the Commission had withheld and then unfroze in what looked suspiciously like a deal to buy off Orban's veto. One arm of the EU pays the ransom, another arm sues over it, and the taxpayer funds both lawyers.
2. Tractors arrive to thank the Green Deal in person
On 29 January farmers rolled their tractors onto the Brussels orbital and the Walloon motorways, blocking roads and besieging distribution centres, having finally tired of the fallow-land mandate, the order to cut fertiliser by a fifth and the Farm to Fork sermon. The Green Deal promised to save the planet and instead delivered a continent-wide demonstration of who actually grows the food.
→ vrt.be
3. A new AI Office, because nothing fosters innovation like a fresh bureaucracy
The Commission unveiled its AI "innovation package" and, naturally, the centrepiece was a decision to set up an AI Office in Brussels to develop, coordinate and supervise AI policy across all 27 members. The plan to make Europe a startup powerhouse begins, as ever, by hiring more regulators in Brussels to grade everyone else's homework.
4. Apple opens up iOS in the EU, and everyone hates it anyway
Forced by the Digital Markets Act, Apple announced alternative app stores, third-party browser engines and a "Core Technology Fee" of 50 cents per install for the EU only. Spotify branded it "extortion" and Epic called it "malicious compliance," proving that when Brussels mandates an outcome it does not control, the result satisfies precisely nobody.
5. The fridge police phase out the gases that make heat pumps work
Parliament and Council finalised the revised F-gas Regulation, setting deadlines to ban the fluorinated refrigerants used in the very heat pumps the EU is simultaneously ordering everyone to install. Mandate the appliance, then outlaw what makes it run, and call the contradiction a climate strategy.
6. New greenwashing rules, so the EU can decide which adjectives you may print
On 17 January MEPs adopted the Empowering Consumers directive, banning generic green labels such as "eco-friendly" and "climate neutral" unless blessed by an approved scheme. Brussels, having noticed that companies make vague claims, decided the cure was to license the vocabulary of marketing itself.
7. The court adviser says yes, keep fining Google billions
An Advocate General at the Court of Justice recommended upholding the Commission's 2.42 billion euro fine on Google over its shopping service, a penalty first issued back in 2017 and still grinding through the courts. Seven years to confirm a fine, and the EU wonders why it is not the home of the next great technology firm.
→ rte.ie
8. Frozen messages, voluntary for now, mandatory if they get their way
The Commission published its report on the "voluntary" chat-control derogation that lets platforms scan private messages, the prelude to the proposal to make such scanning compulsory and break encryption for everyone. Sold as protecting children, it amounts to a permanent search of every citizen's correspondence, which is exactly the sort of thing free societies used to forbid.
9. The migration pact gets quietly "fine-tuned" while the boats keep coming
Throughout January officials tinkered with the texts of the new Migration and Asylum Pact, the grand redistribution scheme cooked up to share out arrivals the bloc had failed to stop arriving. Years of negotiation produced an elaborate machine for managing the failure rather than the simpler idea of controlling the external border in the first place.
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