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.
The month Brussels discovered it was being spied on, was outraged, and promptly resolved to spy on the rest of us more efficiently, between handing itself the keys to the banks and a prize for its own conscience.
The month Brussels named a single telecoms market its most ambitious plan in twenty-six years, handed the ECB a continent of banks to supervise, and was told by its own lawyers that the tax it most wanted was illegal.
The month Brussels carved up its own solar market for Beijing, declared the recession over by a third of a percent, and sent a fact-finding team to Gibraltar to discover that Spain was being difficult.
The month Brussels swallowed Croatia, drafted its own prosecutor, lectured Washington about snooping while building a snooping directive of its own, and approved a tax its own lawyers said was illegal.
The month Brussels discovered it was being spied on, decided the answer was more Brussels, and locked twenty-five sleepless ministers in a room to invent new ways to seize your savings.
The month Brussels decided that the gravest threat to European civilisation was the open jug of olive oil on your restaurant table, while quietly drawing up report cards for sovereign nations.
The month Brussels capped the City's bonuses over Britain's objection, watched its own carbon market collapse, and quietly drafted rules on how restaurants may pour olive oil.
The month Brussels reached into ordinary savers' bank accounts in Cyprus, told eurozone capitals to hand over their budgets for marking, and fined Microsoft half a billion euros over a missing menu.
The month Brussels invented a brand new EU-level tax, dreamed up a fingerprint database for every visitor, and discovered there was horse in the lasagne it had spent decades regulating.
The month Brussels invented an eleven-country tax, a German Green tried to rewrite the internet, and frozen lasagne quietly turned into a horse.
The month Brussels collected a peace prize in Oslo, levied its biggest ever fine, and quietly handed the banks of an entire continent to the central bank nobody elected.
A month in which Brussels failed to agree its own budget, demanded a separate euro-area budget anyway, set quotas for company boards, and packed three presidents off to Oslo to collect a peace prize that three actual peace laureates begged it to refuse.
The month Brussels gave itself a medal for peace, lost a commissioner to a cash-for-snus scandal, launched a banking takeover, and discovered that its own boardroom quota was illegal.
September 2012, the month Brussels banned the rest of your light bulbs, demanded a federation of nation states, and handed the European Central Bank the keys to everyone's banks and bond markets at once.
The month the European Central Bank promised to buy bonds without limit, Greece guarded its own border without permission, and Brussels quietly shelved its plan to read everyone's phone records, but only for now.
The month a bankrupt, divided, communist-led island took the wheel, a central banker promised whatever it takes with money he did not have, and Brussels began drafting itself a tax.
The month Brussels answered a debt crisis caused by too much Europe with a prescription of more Europe, handed the keys to your banks to the ECB, and told the Parliament to sit down when member states tried to guard their own borders.
The month Brussels graded its members like a schoolmaster, blessed a new tax it could not pass, defended its own power grab as not a power grab, and discovered it could regulate the name of a sock.
April 2012, in which Brussels handed your flight history to Washington for fifteen years, drafted itself a brand new tax, and lectured a continent of the unemployed about a job-rich recovery.
The month Brussels signed a treaty to police everyone's budget, docked Hungary half a billion euros to prove it meant it, and started shopping for its own taxes.
The month Brussels signed a global internet treaty, watched a quarter of a million people march against it, and then quietly asked its own court to find a way out.
January 2012, in which Brussels signs a secret copyright treaty in Tokyo, drafts a balanced budget rule for everyone else's constitution, and decides it may now tax the sky over China.
The month twenty-six leaders signed a pact to write Brussels budget rules into their own constitutions, one prime minister said no, and the printing press worked overtime to keep the whole thing alive.
The month Brussels decreed that water does not prevent dehydration, installed two unelected technocrats to run sovereign nations, and floated the idea of mutualising everyone else's debt.
The month Brussels conjured a trillion euros out of leverage, told scientists what an embryo is, and decided your sandwich needed a font-size rule.