Ice Cream and Gum Join Europe’s Panic Squad
A confused EU rule is suddenly being waved around like a badge of honor, with snack manufacturers auditioning for emergency status and pretending this is a serious discussion about resilience.
EU Melodrama & Sidewalk Diplomacy Correspondent
In a gray office near Alexanderplatz, lobbyists for ice cream makers, gum manufacturers, and the little sermonizing parasites who orbit them spent Tuesday trying to persuade anyone with a badge that frozen sugar should count as critical infrastructure under a confused EU resilience rule. They came dressed like men who had learned to fear summer and desire exemption in the same breath: soft shoes, expensive trousers, clipped smiles, the whole lubricated little pageant. The pitch was delivered with the solemnity of a wartime ration board and the moral cleanliness of a toilet after a private equity retreat.
The scheme began as one of Europe’s favorite tricks: take a boring compliance question, feed it enough jargon, and watch grown adults start humping the paperwork as if it were national destiny. A rule meant to map supply chains and emergency readiness was suddenly treated as a doorway into prestige. One trade representative, who requested anonymity because he still owes his accountant an apology, said the sector only wanted “clarity.” That is corporate language for wanting a crown without the labor, a hard little throne with no one asking where the money came from or who got bent over to finance it.
By noon the room had split into its usual little cathedral of bad faith. On one side were consultants in soft shoes and obedient haircuts, muttering about “continuity” and “consumer confidence” with the moist conviction of people who think a spreadsheet can absolve a conscience. On the other side were public-interest types furious that a gummy bear brand might cosplay as strategic industry if the right committee winked at it long enough. Everyone agreed the rule was muddled. Nobody agreed that muddle should stop the feeding frenzy.
The humiliatingly specific target here is the kind of ritualized nonsense that thrives in an EU internal market working group, where a committee can spend three meetings discussing whether a freezer is a resilience asset while a trade association slides in with a glossy deck and a bowl of branded mints. There are always compliance people in the back, nodding like altar boys for deregulation, and always one policy consultant with a lanyard and a dead-eyed grin, ready to translate greed into “preparedness.” The office choreography is the same every time: paper, coffee, a few terrible pastries, and men pretending their desire for influence is actually civic duty.
A Berlin-based industry adviser said the proposal was not about privilege but preparedness. “If supply chains fail, people want basics,” said Jana Feldmann, who has the kind of calm voice usually reserved for therapists and fraud witnesses. “Ice cream matters in heatwaves, and gum matters for nerves, focus, and, frankly, social survival.” It was a perfect line: half public service, half handjob for the institution. Even the bureaucrats looked briefly seduced by the argument, which is exactly how this particular racket keeps breathing.
The political hypocrisy is the real dessert. The left, when it is feeling hygienic, loves to speak the language of resilience right up until a brand manager drops an artisanal wrapper on the table and calls it local culture. Then the doctrine develops a soft spot for frozen indulgence, as if anti-capitalism were just a tasting menu with better fonts. The right is worse in a more shameless way: it worships toughness, border discipline, and civilizational muscle, then starts blinking like a needy dog the moment a freezer-box sector promises jobs, flags, and a press release with enough starch in it to pass for national security.
What gets excluded is everyone who actually has to live with the consequences. The paperwork performs power by deciding which industries get to call themselves essential and which workers just get to keep hauling crates, cleaning spills, and swallowing the smell of the whole arrangement. A consumer office spokesperson said it was reviewing how the rule should be interpreted and whether any company was “overreading its role.” That phrase may do more work than the entire snack sector. For now, the continent’s most overfed men and their compliance choir can keep arguing that wafer cones and peppermint strips are the backbone of civilization, while the rest of us watch the institutions rub themselves raw trying to call it resilience.