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.
March was the month Brussels billed a phone maker the better part of two billion euros, switched on its censorship machine for journalists, and quietly drafted the paperwork to read everybody's private messages.
The month Brussels wrote the world's first rulebook for thinking machines, opened a new investigation into a dancing app, and graciously withdrew a law it should never have written, all while tractors blocked the door.
The month Brussels drew up a plan to wreck Hungary's economy, then acted surprised that farmers were driving tractors at the building.
The month Brussels declared itself the planet's first artificial-intelligence referee, blessed a fresh migrant-sharing scheme nobody asked for, and watched one prime minister walk out of the room so the rest could spend fifty billion euros without him.
The month Brussels agreed to let governments break the padlock on your browser, voted to abolish national vetoes, and began printing a euro that watches you spend it.
The month Brussels appointed itself referee of free speech, switched on a border carbon tax it dare not call a tax, and held a grand summit on the future of Europe that could not even agree to mention migration.
The month Brussels paid an autocrat to guard a border it cannot guard, lectured a social network about truth, and decreed how a citizen should change a phone battery.
August saw Brussels switch on its grand machine for policing the internet, publish a fresh import tax and a new veto over takeovers, and watch its migration policy collapse on the rocks of Lampedusa.
The month Brussels blessed a third attempt at sending your data to America, paid a strongman to mind its borders, and threw a lavish summit that could not bring itself to name Russia.
The month Brussels invented its own currency, demanded its own taxes, charged Google with the crime of being good at advertising, and bought a North African coastguard to do the border control it refuses to do itself.
The month Brussels handed Meta a record 1.2 billion euro fine, watched its own lawyers brand its message-scanning dream unlawful, and refused to let anyone check the Council's books for the thirteenth year running.
The month Brussels own lawyers warned that scanning everyone's private messages might be illegal, signed off a new carbon tax on filling the tank, and went courting Tunisia for help with the borders it spent two decades insisting should stay open.
The month Brussels rebranded fresh subsidy regimes as simplification, ordered citizens to renovate their own homes, and raised rates into a banking panic, all while still refusing to publish the texts that bought the vaccines.
The month Brussels voted to abolish the engine, threw money at a subsidy war it claims to hate, and quietly drew up the blueprint for a wallet that knows who you are.
The month Brussels fined a phone app for asking nicely, flew to Davos to promise a subsidy war, and celebrated thirty years of the single market while quietly losing the keys to its own front door.
The month Brussels caught a suitcase of Qatari cash, voted to tax your petrol and your boiler, and lectured Hungary on corruption with a straight face.
The month Brussels invented three brand new taxes for itself, set a gas cap so high it could never trigger, and ordered every boardroom to hit a quota while two member states screamed at each other over a single rescue ship.
The month Brussels mandated your charger, banned your engine, taxed the gas companies and discovered, with a gasp, that its own border force had been ignoring the border. Ever-closer union, one missing port at a time.
The month Brussels declared a windfall tax that was definitely not a tax, told a member state it was no longer a democracy, and then dreamed up a fund to make sovereignty itself a federal competence.
The month Brussels rationed your radiator, declared Russian gas the new green, and lectured Europeans about their thermostats while signing energy deals with a regime that launders money to bribe MEPs.
The month Brussels declared gas and nuclear officially green, printed a fresh bond-buying tool to rescue its own currency, and found time to sue post-Brexit Britain four more times before lunch.
The month Brussels turned the rulebook on your garden into directly applicable law, voted to abolish the petrol engine, and decided the cure for ten years of charger choice was a single mandated port.
The month Brussels decided to read everyone's private messages, abolish the national veto and buy the gas itself, all while granting itself a clean budget bill of health.
The month Brussels seized the internet, pooled the gas, scolded Hungary, and learned from its own court that perhaps endless border checks were a step too far.
The month Brussels answered a war on its doorstep by reaching for a charging-cable standard, a carbon tax of its very own and the power to redesign your mattress.