European Union

Drivers have been hit with parking charges while queueing for petrol pumps in a possible breach of consumer law, the competition watchdog has said.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating Euro Car Parks over whether its practices at petrol stations and its handling of appeals may have broken the law.
The watchdog said it would consider whether it was “fair” for drivers to receive parking charge notices while “queuing for, or using, petrol pumps”, as well as other services at forecourts such as car washes and EV chargers.

Euro, d’ye see? Forriners.

As her comments made the rounds on social media, two MEPs from rightwing populist parties shot back at her online. “Cry more,” wrote the Finnish MEP Sebastian Tynkkynen, of the Finns party, in response to a clip of Al-Sahlani addressing parliament, while the Danish MP Kristoffer Storm, of the Denmark Democrats, said she “should go home”.

On Wednesday, Al-Sahlani said she had filed a police complaint against Storm, accusing him of using racist speech as well as hate speech against her. Her complaint had only focused on the Danish MEP, she said, as Swedish police were unsure of how to handle Tynkkynen’s social media post.

Still, fun to see that the EU Parliament is, at least, home to some robust political debate.

And reporting this to the police? Gerrouttofit.

The Remain campaign in 2016 was derisively called “project fear” by Brexiters. A decade on, the evidence shows that the warnings were actually misplaced – the damage is even worse than previously feared.
Research commissioned by City Hall found that London’s economy was £30bn smaller than it would have been without Brexit and that Londoners are on average nearly £3,400 worse off as a result. If current trends continue, the UK economy could be £250bn smaller by 2030 than similar EU countries.

Other policies that are damaging to hte economy – NI rises, higher min wage, excessive taxation of the richer, say – are not judged by whether they make the country poorer or not but by whether they’re correct policies or not.

Fun, innit? That here, with Brexit, the claim “economic damage” is supposed to convince all, immediately. No further discussion is necessary.

It will, however, take a marathon of democratic persuasion to get us there……the democratic persuasion has to start now……the best place for Britain is indeed “at the heart of Europe”, and the only way to be at the heart of Europe is to be a full member of the EU.

Up the propaganda!

As Britain approaches the 10th anniversary of its vote to leave the EU, the British are beginning to debate rejoining what they call Europe. But, as in most previous British debates about “Europe”, this is Europe with the Europe left out. The discussion is all about what would be best for Britain economically and the British politics of getting there. Little or no account is taken of what the rest of Europe thinks or cares about.

Whether we rejoin or not is a calculation to be taken in our own interests, obviously. And who gives a buggery what J Foreigner thinks about it?

As to what the EU is it’s “Lanyards around the throat of humanity. Forever”

Brussels fails to recognise that digital sovereignty isn’t just about who owns or controls your technology. It’s also about having an independent vision for how that technology is designed, developed and deployed.

Well, there are those of us who say that the absence of such a vision is a damn good thing. What the Fuck’s it got to do with government – whether national or EU – how people use a new technology. That’s up to the people, not the rulers.

Men of plan, eh? Always with us and yet we have to shout them down every damn time.

As if that were not cavalier enough, Britain’s place in Europe became dependent on the soap-opera dynamics of the Notting Hill set: it was all tennis in Regent’s Park and weekends at Chequers, Michael (Gove) letting down Dave and what will Sam (Cameron) think of Boris. Johnson insists he didn’t “give a fuck about being prime minister,” while Osborne begs to differ: “It was nothing to do with the EU, Britain’s place in the world. It was Game of Thrones. That’s what Boris Johnson was playing. And he could see the Iron Throne right there about to be vacated.” This stuff was all-consuming at the time – and yet what was at stake, as these Etonians worked out their schoolboy rivalries, was nothing less than the destiny of the UK. That recklessness with the futures of 70m people remains unforgivable – and the guilt belongs to Cameron and Osborne almost as much as to Gove and Johnson.

Whinge whinge about the EU.

It reminds you of things some may have forgotten, including the extent to which this whole thing came about as a wheeze, a clever tactical ploy, plotted by the careless people who were then running the country. In 2013, David Cameron and George Osborne sought to placate noisy Eurosceptics in their own ranks by promising an in/out referendum after the next election – a pledge they assumed they’d never have to honour because they were sure they’d fail to win an outright majority in parliament, whereupon they would cheerfully trade the promise away as a concession to the Lib Dems.

Because allowing the people their say is unforgiveable recklessness, of course.

Right on target for Freedland, yes.

The EU is to release more than €16bn to Hungary that had been frozen under the rule of Viktor Orbán, with Ursula von der Leyen hailing the “winds of change” in the country since the election of Péter Magyar last month.

The decision, described as a “historic breakthrough” by the new prime minister, comes as police in Hungary have said they will allow next month’s Pride parade in Budapest to take place. Last year they sought to block the event on the orders of the government of the rightwing Orbán.

Ah, it isn’t.

So if some grubby little nationalist gets elected for 16 years then the multinational money don’t arrive. As soon as the gubby little nationalist is ejected then the cash does roll up. Isn’t that a nice and rules based impartiality?

The UK will get no special treatment in its future economic relationship with the EU, European ministers have said, in a further blow to Keir Starmer’s hopes of negotiating a single market for goods.

You do not, at the beginning of a negotiation, say “We’ll give you lots of prezzies”. Rather, you insist that they are gouged out of you, one by one, during the negotiations.

Obviously.

Surely even lawyers and politicians know this?

Europe’s rules are not necessarily constraints, but at their best, they are instruments of power. They shift the burden of collective choices away from individuals and on to the companies best placed to bear them. That is why those companies so often oppose them and why, once the rules exist, they usually comply.

The bottle cap is still attached to the bottle in Europe. The question is whether Europe retains the will to be itself – a political project that uses rules to protect its people and shape global markets – or whether, in the name of competitiveness, it surrenders that power to exactly the interests that want that power gone.

The use of bureaucracy to impose those rules to insist upon those – bureaucratically decided – collective choices. For no one rational thinks that it is actual democracy informing EU rule making. And, anyway, collective choices are best made by people individually deciding they’d like to make that choice – the more who do the more collective it is. The bureaucracy imposing the choice of the bureaucracy is not, in any useful sense, a choice, is it?

Britain would not be able to rejoin the EU on the special terms it enjoyed in the past, veterans of the Brexit negotiations have said.

We didn’t like it even with the special deal. We’ll like it even less without. So, don’t rejoin. Seems simple enough.

So, last few days, bit of family biz to take care of. In which I find out that my nephew in law now does pretty much the same job I used to do for Nigel. But for a rather different political party:

Volt aligns its political positions across Europe, presenting a common, pan-European manifesto. In the 2019 European Parliament elections, Volt ran in eight member states with a shared platform, emphasising solutions to supranational challenges, such as climate change, defense, energy policy, migration, economic inequality, terrorism, welfare, and the technological evolution of the labor market. The party advocates for a stronger, more integrated European Union, with the long-term goal of creating a federal Europe.[9] Additionally, Volt endorses the formation of a European army, joint European debt and taxes, nuclear energy including the construction of new nuclear power plants,[10][11] and stronger economic solidarity between the EU member states.

Given the difference in views between us – no, not discussed at a family gathering – it’s even possible that the clan as a whole is now neutral on this specific subject. Which, given how far out on one wing I am would be something of an achievement.

Angela Merkel and Bono have been awarded gongs in the European Union’s first honours list.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainan president, and Lech Walesa, Poland’s first president after communism, join Mrs Merkel in the highest rank of the new European Order of Merit.

Bono, The Edge and the other U2 band members were also named laureates, albeit at a lower grade than Mrs Merkel, who was recognised for leading Germany’s push away from nuclear towards renewable energy.

That nuclear decision was also one of the worst of recent decades, anywhere, by anyone. Whatever the Europeanness of it.

Where did we put that Tyburn Tree?

Sir Keir Starmer has drawn up plans under which the UK will ramp up its net zero targets and cede control over its energy policy as part of closer alignment with Brussels.
A memorandum, published by the Cabinet Office earlier this month, spells out the price that the UK is willing to pay to reset relations with Europe.
This includes a “dynamic alignment” of British law with EU rules on “the promotion of renewable energy”, which would require the UK to decarbonise – not just electricity, but also heating and transport rapidly.
In practice this could see net zero targets doubled, potentially leading to draconian measures such as reducing meat consumption and restrictions on flying, wood fires and driving.

Didn’t we actually have a vote of, you know, the people on this?

EU deal on Ukraine loan could boost UK if it agrees to help pay costs
British firms could get more opportunities to supply defence equipment to Kyiv if agreement can be reached

If UK taxpayers send moeny to Ukraine then some small part of that will come back to UK capitalists.

Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to give the capitalists a cheque directly?

Creating a European UPI would not be easy. The EU is institutionally complex. Banks would resist change. Companies such as Stripe already provide cross-border wiring. But this is about state and bloc autonomy. Ms Lalucq’s curt dismissal of Wero – Europe’s bank-led payments wallet – makes sense as it is a private sector product, not public infrastructure. India’s experience raised civil liberty questions. It could be argued that Europe has a mature privacy framework to address them.

So, Europe build a payments infrastructure – to replace Mastercard and Visa. OK. But it must be state run. Hmm. And we’re all absolutely certain that we’ll have privacy on that network, right?

Donald Trump has already set the tone by saying the US will seize Greenland “one way or the other”, and no part of the triumvirate around him is trying to hide their imperial intentions any more. Not the nepotists and grifters amassing ever greater private fortunes. Not the white supremacist ideologues drawing inspiration from Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer! to post “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage”, via official US government social media accounts. Not the techno-nihilists salivating to mine every bit of Greenland’s mineral resources and rule their own neofeudal city states on its coast.

Oh, right. The solution then?

So what can Europe do, as this mad historic fantasy comes closer to reality? How do you maintain a space of democracy and the rule of law in a world that is rapidly reverting to imperialism, oligarchy and the rule of power alone? Only by building a protective moat of federalism around it.

Everybody in Europe gives up power to the technocrats in Brussels. Goodbye democracy and all that. Monet’s dream comes true. Adolf’s, Willie’s, in fact.

We had to destroy democracy in Europe in order to save democracy in Europe.

So, Venezuela and Greenland are a revival of Great Power -isms and play into hte hands of Russia over Ukraine, China over Taiwan. We must therefore have a European response!

The third imperative concerns unity. European unity is essential, but it cannot become an excuse for paralysis. If unity cannot be achieved, those governments that are unwilling to act – such as Hungary but also others on a case-by-case basis – must be excluded, and exclusion must have consequences. States that block collective action at the European level cannot continue to benefit fully from shared defence, security cooperation or industrial investment. Solidarity is a two-way street and not unconditional.

That is, Europe must be the fourth Great Power and what happens in Europe’s sphere of influence will be enforced the same way.

Stick a pickelhaube on that and it could be the German Empire insisting in 1912, couldn’t it?

Around 70% of Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters think future PM should open talks on rejoining EU, poll suggests

Even, a bit of a line in the sand?

Keir Starmer’s government has been told a closer EU trade deal is a “strategic necessity” for companies in Britain as growing numbers of exporters find it tougher to do business under the UK’s post-Brexit agreement

Of course, any such deal must be made in isolation – no going around changing the terms of trade with non-EU in order to get something from the EU.

Which the EU isn’t going to do so there’s the end of that, eh?