Eurobloat #0192 • April 2026
April 2026 brought a grand 'deregulation' plan that, read closely, hands more power to Brussels and less to national capitals, plus a court telling a member state which laws it may pass.
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Eurobloat
A monthly, sceptical look at what the European Union got up to last month. The promised paradise that never quite arrives, told one directive, regulation, and ruling at a time.
192 posts
Eurobloat #0191 • March 2026
March 2026 saw Brussels invent a brand-new EU-wide company on top of the twenty-seven national ones, lurch belatedly towards migration control by way of deals with the Taliban, and quietly concede its AI Act could not be switched on in time.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0190 • February 2026
February 2026 saw Brussels mercifully scrap seventy per cent of the reporting rules it had sworn were essential, while its arbitrary fine against X headed to court and Washington called the apparatus censorship.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0189 • January 2026
January 2026 brought the welcome sight of Brussels unpicking its own digital rulebook and mourning the death of the Brussels effect, even as it sharpened its tools for a record year of fining Big Tech.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0188 • December 2025
December 2025 brought the first Digital Services Act fine, €120 million levied on X by a formula nobody could explain, plus another deforestation delay and brave new rules for toys.
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Eurobloat #0187 • November 2025
November 2025 saw Brussels edge message-scanning and mandatory age checks closer to law, the real scandal of the month, while also, to its credit, beginning to unpick the digital rulebook it once called sacred.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0186 • October 2025
October 2025 saw even the Parliament revolt against the Commission's €2 trillion budget, while the deforestation law was postponed yet again and the Chat Control message-scanning plan was beaten back at the Council.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0185 • September 2025
September 2025 brought von der Leyen's annual sermon, in which the answer to every problem was more Europe, while the Parliament lined up two motions to sack her Commission.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0184 • August 2025
August 2025 was the month the world-beating AI Act started to bite, whereupon Europe's own champions, America's giants and Washington all queued up to call it a mistake.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0183 • July 2025
July 2025 opened with a request for two trillion euros, a fresh set of eurotaxes on vapes and tobacco, and a 2040 climate target whose sums lean on foreign carbon credits.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0182 • June 2025
June 2025 saw Brussels suddenly discover that red tape is bad, but only when it stands between the Union and €800 billion of defence spending, while finding time to regulate the nation's dogs and cats.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0181 • May 2025
May 2025 saw Brussels celebrate a Brexit 'reset' whose real prize was twelve more years in British waters and a quiet leash of rule-taking, a reminder of exactly what leaving was meant to escape.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0180 • April 2025
April 2025 saw the EU declare a trade war and unwind it within twenty-four hours, while unveiling a security strategy that revives the old dream of breaking everyone's encryption.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0179 • March 2025
March 2025 saw the EU discover that its sacred fiscal discipline and legal niceties are wonderfully flexible the moment it wants to borrow €800 billion, and that it would rather like a say in where your savings go.
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Eurobloat #0178 • February 2025
February 2025 saw the EU's first AI bans take effect and an American vice-president arrive to tell Brussels, to its face, that it is strangling technology and retreating from free speech.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0177 • January 2025
January 2025 saw Brussels unveil a 'Competitiveness Compass', an elaborate admission that its own rules have made Europe uncompetitive, followed by a promise to maybe do something about it later.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0176 • December 2024
December 2024 saw Brussels mandate the charger in your pocket, clinch a vast trade deal that set its own farmers and governments at war, and postpone the deforestation law it could not make work.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0175 • November 2024
November 2024 saw a new Commission scrape into office on the slimmest majority in EU history, the prize for five weeks of backroom horse-trading nobody ever put to a voter.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0174 • October 2024
October 2024 saw Brussels slap tariffs of up to 45% on affordable Chinese electric cars, overruling Germany and a divided bloc, and making clean vehicles dearer for the citizens it claims to serve.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0173 • September 2024
September 2024 saw Brussels' own elder statesman report that its rules are strangling Europe, the same week its court forced €13 billion on a reluctant Ireland and a commissioner quit in fury.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0172 • August 2024
August 2024 saw a European commissioner use the Digital Services Act to menace Elon Musk over a live interview hosted in America, a censorship reflex so naked that even the Commission backed away from it.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0171 • July 2024
July 2024 gave us the Union in one image: a continent-spanning project whose great new rule was that your bottle cap must now stay attached, spilling drinks from Lisbon to Helsinki.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0170 • June 2024
June 2024 saw voters deliver a hard-right rebuke across the continent and the establishment resolve to change nothing, while the Council quietly pulled its own vote to scan everyone's private messages.
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Eurobloat #0169 • May 2024
The month Brussels crowned itself the planet's first artificial-intelligence schoolmaster, billed itself for rejected migrants, and pocketed the profits on someone else's frozen money.
Eurobloat
Eurobloat #0168 • April 2024
The last plenary before the elections, and the outgoing Parliament emptied the drawer: a migration pact that shares out people like Brussels shares out blame, mandatory repair lectures, banned hotel shampoo bottles, and a fresh cash limit to keep an eye on your wallet.
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