Panic at the Discotheque: The EU Declares War on Glitter

One week into a new year already overheated by wars on three continents, the EU has decided that more important than beating back Russia in Ukraine or dousing Middle Eastern flames is banning glitter from makeup shelves and dance floors. That on its face might strike some as innocuous or insane as Brussels tumbles toward irrelevance. The European political bombshell from the weekend is the announcement that the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, will be stepping down by July. It’s wonderful news for Euroskeptics, because the country that holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU (not to be confused with the Council of Europe) between July and December this year is Hungary.What that means is that come July and until a successor is appointed, the upright-walking biped chairing European Council meetings will likely be the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban. That’s the very Mr. Orban who has compared the EU to a “bad contemporary parody” of the former Soviet Union. Is he wrong? The prospect of Mr. Orban calling the shots at Brussels, even for a few weeks, has already set to squawking the ranks of neoliberal chickens who currently rule the EU roost. More on that below. It is a thing like the glitter ban that is symptomatic of a sprawling and dysfunctional bureaucracy, with all the various parts moving in the wrong direction — against greater personal liberty, toward more heavy-handed state control. The measure to ban “loose glitter” passed last October. It is part of the so-called European Zero Pollution action plan, which seeks to cut microplastic pollution by 30 percent by 2030. The phasing in of the plan starts now. Glitter may no longer be produced in the EU. In forbidding the sparkling stuff, European regulators are not taking issue with nighttime revelry in the bars and cabarets of Paris and Berlin, but with the substance itself. Each particle of glitter is under five millimeters in length and coated with varnished aluminum. That lends shine to faces on the dancefloor or fashion catwalk, but it is apparently not appreciated by fish. Doesn’t do wonders, either, for soil, where it ends once the party is over. In a true free-market economy, the market would probably do the ecologically sensitive course correcting here, though one hopes Brussels is not taking inspiration from overzealously regulatory California. It would be less laughable had it been a measure swiftly passed and executed, but such is not the case — only after six years of probably tortuous discussions did the ban finally materialize. This happens against the backdrop of a Europe lagging behind America in almost every way that counts: commercially, militarily, technologically. As Germany’s economy falters, some are already calling it a “failed state.” As alarmingly, and despite positive developments like Italy’s recent decoupling from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing is still making serious inroads on Brussels.Add to Europe’s mounting woes its deprivation of cheap Russian energy. That might be a good thing for American companies in the short term, particularly as American LNG exports to Europe soar, but in the long run things could become more problematic for Europe. Energy costs for many European consumers have skyrocketed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With an already overregulated consumer market the shrinkflation beast is proving to be tougher to tame on the Continent than it is in America. Ukraine will be one of the elephants charging through the room when the EU goes to parliamentary elections in June. (Immigration, another.) It is already accepted that Europe alone won’t be able to front the more than $400 billion, or double that amount according to some reports, that it will take to rebuild Ukraine.Back to Mr. Michel. Of his incipient departure, some, like the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, with whom he has repeatedly clashed, will hardly object. Others are already catching a whiff of the EU’s wobbly future. A Dutch member of the European Parliament, Sophie in’t Veld, equated Mr. Michel’s resignation to “a captain leaving the ship in the middle of a storm.”The European Parliament is where things will come to a head in just a few months’ time. It is already a body badly out of touch with the European public it ostensibly serves, and is mired in corruption scandals. Nevertheless, it is the fulcrum of European political power right now. Soon after the June elections, the European Parliament has to elect a new European Commission president. Ms. von der Leyen’s five-year term is rapidly coming to a close, and whoever replaces her will be the public face of Europe struggling to keep its clout up on the international stage.Already the nationalist-leaning factions in the European Parliament are girding for a fight. Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally and Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Northern League are rallying their movements, so to speak, to tip the scales to the right in the June elections. One of the goals of their coalition-building is to find a better alternative to Ms. Von der Leyen, whom some European politicians have criticized for acting like a kind of “queen.”Under her leadership, if that’s the word, Europe has drifted hither and thither, mismanaged illegal migrant flows, and seen its influence generally diminish — all things that leaders like Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Orban for various reasons do not like. They will pull their far-right programs of legislative action further to the center to reach their objectives, one of which is the demolition of the European project as we know it. So save your glitter.

Panic at the Discotheque: The EU Declares War on Glitter

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