Comment by piker
7 hours ago
Even living nearby in the UK it blows my mind how quickly the EU proposes, kills and then revives and passes controversial legislation in such a short timeframe.
7 hours ago
Even living nearby in the UK it blows my mind how quickly the EU proposes, kills and then revives and passes controversial legislation in such a short timeframe.
Well, the impression of speed is mainly in the head of the headline writers.
What has actually happened is that after about three years of faffing about the Council finally decided on it negotiation position begore the Coreper 2 meeting last week, thought it seems they ran put of time at actual the meeting and had to have the formal approval this week.
The Council is only one of three parties that draft new laws, so now there's are still several rounds of negotiations left.
Nothing substantial has happened to the three texts since last week, it's just that "chat control is back" drives traffic and "Council preparatory body formally approves draft position that got consensus previously but didn't formally get passed because people were fighting over Ukraine stuff for too long" doesn't.
> Nothing substantial has happened to the three texts since last week, it's just that "chat control is back" drives traffic and "Council preparatory body formally approves draft position that got consensus previously but didn't formally get passed because people were fighting over Ukraine stuff for too long" doesn't.
While I agree with your point, it's still crucial to raise awareness of Europe's actions. It may be a small step, but it is not insignificant.
Awareness of the reality, yes, but there's no reason to play people's emotions to get them "aware" of it - or in other words, get them angry about it.
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As others have mentioned:
1. this wasn't fast, it took ~5 years and most (but not all) of the problematic parts have been removed
2. It also wasn't "fully rejected" or anything in the decision which gained some awareness of hacker news, just one specific draft was rejected, not the proposal as a whole (but IMHO it should have been).
3. it's not passed just approved by the council, which consists of the various head of states elected in their respective countries (i.e. is the easiest part to pass something controversial), but still needs to pass the European parliament (elected through the EU elections)
4. and then it must not be shot down by the ECJ or ECHR, both might shot it down, the ECJ for it being excessive/disproportional, and the ECHR because privacy is accepted as a human right by it (in general, there are exceptions so not 100% guaranteed). Or shut down by the German supreme court (same reason as ECJ and ECHR) which has somewhat of a veto right (or else Germany wouldn't have been able to legally join the EU), idk. if any other countries supreme courts have similar veto rights, but idk. why they shouldn't have)
EU law has supremacy over national laws. National courts need to disapply local laws in conflict with EU law, so typically any subsequent local disputes in court will just be ruled based on a new EU law/ruling. EU laws in conflict with a local constitution pose more of a challenge: from the EU point of view, EU law is supreme and they might apply infringement procedures for failing to recognize it, but for a country, the constitution is probably more important than a treaty.
That's generally how the EU works, they forced Ireland to hold another referenda after the first one rejected the Lisbon treaty
The Irish people demanded concessions, got them.
Saying "forced" about this is like if someone offered me a job, me reading the offer and saying "can I do a 4-day week?", the company's response being "yes, here's a new contract for you to sign", and describing that second contract as "forced" on me.
Forced - was this an EU navy ship parking off Dublin?
TFA mentions "european governments" but this legislation is proposed by a bunch of european members of parliament who in no way represent any governments and much less the commission or the union. In short it tries to depict a group of old farts as an overreaching snooping authority.
I wonder who could have a vested interest in depicting the EU as a repressive regime...
> this legislation is proposed by a bunch of european members of parliament who in no way represent any governments and much less the commission
Well, here is the guy from where that comes from, the minister of justice of Denmark. He certainly represents a good part of Denmark, even though he may be irrelevant to any other EU country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hummelgaard
This legislation is not proposed by members of parliament, only the commission can draft legislation, the parliament can only approve it.
However the European Council consists of the heads of state / government of EU member states, not MEP's.
Are you saying that a neutral observer would not see this as repressive?
"European Council has no legislative power, it is a strategic (and crisis-solving) body that provides the union with general political directions and priorities, and acts as a collective presidency." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Council
Wrong Council, this is about the Council of the European Union (yes the naming is terrible).
Because it doesn't, people are just embarrassingly ignorant of how the EU legislative process works so when a vote to give first approval to a text is cancelled before it takes place journalists and reddit all over pull out the mission accomplished banners and when a negotiating position is approved everyone has a surprised pikachu face
The "proposal" was made something like 3 years ago, the killing never happened and the passing, if it passes, will happen in at least one year from now because this will definitely take a long time to get through parliament and even longer to get through the trilogue.
The process is many things but quick it is not
This is of course a process, that does not lend itself to be democratic, because it is way longer than most people's attention span. People don't manage to remember things that happened in politics 4 years ago in their own country. Now they are required to follow up on dozens of shitty proposals, all probably illegal in their own country, and those don't even happen in their own country? That divides the number of people, who even start looking into this stuff by a factor of 1000 or so.
what do you mean, a slow bureaucracy is a democratic bureaucracy. the last thing you want is a highly efficient bureaucracy enacting change quickly.
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Is there a website that tracks these? That would be a nice divulgation process.
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People’s attention span has decreased to a matter of days now, if not hours. Have you seen how quickly front page news in the US is forgotten?
The democratic process needs a revamp but it shouldn’t be driven by the general populations attention span.
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People on average are really not that stupid and are absolutely capable of looking back a few years for context.
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>> that does not lend itself to be democratic, because it is way longer than most people's attention span
The attention span of the general public _shouldn't_ matter. That's why we elect politicians.
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The issue is not with the lack of understanding of "process". But sheer frustration because there's nothing you can do as just a citizen. An unelected council of !notAyatollah has decided, and this thing is being pushed at glacier slow pace.
If EU is a trade union this is a severe overreach, if EU wants to be a federation, there's not enough checks and balances. This is the crux of the problem.
The issue is that this is a legislation that only ones in power want(censorship on communications channel where they themselves are exempt from it), that has been pushed over and over again under different names(it goes so far back - it started with ACTA talks and extreme surveillance proposals to fight copyright violations) and details in implementation and/or excuse(this time we get classic "think of the children")
The Council is a meeting of the heads of state, all of which are elected in their respective countries.
Your problem is with the leadership of countries, not with the EU as an institution. I agree that it is a problem btw, but I think you got the wrong culprit. This isn't pushed on the states by the EU, this is the states using the EU to push it and launder the bad publicity.
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> Because it doesn't, people are just embarrassingly ignorant of how the EU legislative process works
Hmm, now whose fault is it that the EU institutions are so complicated and opaque? The citizens? The journalists? Or maybe...?
Complicated, sure, but opaque? EU is incredibly transparent – the amount of information on the European Council website [1] is daunting. There are vote results, meeting schedules, agendas, background briefs, lists of participants, reports, recordings of public council sessions, and so on and so on. All publicly available in each of the 24 EU official languages for whoever cares enough to look. And it's not just the council! The EU Treaties and Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU gives any EU citizen the right to access documents possessed by EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies (with a few exceptions for eg. public security and military matters) [2].
The problem is mostly the sheer amount of things going on, you couldn't possibly keep up with it all.
[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/
[2] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/document/en/163352
They're not complicated for anyone with above room temperature IQ. And they're almost identical to how it works in the member countries anyway
And in a democracy if you don't know how your own laws are made the fault is always yours as a voter
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> Hmm, now whose fault is it that the EU institutions are so complicated and opaque? The citizens? The journalists? Or maybe...?
They are not. People just don't bother themselves to spend half a calory in brain power to read even the Wikipedia page about it, and just repeat shit they read in forum posts.
I mean, here on HN, a website where people are supposedly slightly above average in terms of being able to read shit, the amount of times I read how EU is "bureacrats in Brussels" "pushing hard for changes" is weird.
If you are not really subject to public control and re-election, it makes it much easier.
EU politics don't play much of a role in the media. The older and more cynical I become, the more. I am convinced: that's by design. That way, national politicians can move politically wanted, but publicly unpopular things to Brussels and blame the EU. We are just exposed to that much EU lawmaking news because we are directly affected as a subculture.
During the Brexit referendum days, I learned that British friends of mine did not even know they had EU parliamentary elections - I had to prove to them via Wikipedia AND had to read them the name of their representative (who just so happened to live just down the roar), nor did they care. Made many things more clear to me.
For democracy and government [1] to work it has to remain small and localised. The US had the right idea by expressly limiting the reach of the federal government to very explicit narrow things mentioned in the constitution (of course this was expanded by unconstitutional means over many governments over many years now but that is getting off topic).
The EU seems to be taking the opposite approach - countries push any unpopular law into the growing EU layer to prevent local backlash affecting them. As comments around this call it - "political laundering". A great term that I shall be borrowing.
[1] Relatedly, the philosopher Jimmy Carr has a great line about the failing of communism is about scale. It works locally at the family level but it can't scale to the level of a country.
You are a fool if you think the UK is better. I've moved from the EU to the UK and it is worse in every way when it comes to authoritarian measures.
I'm not sure how you can have already forgotten the fact that we have to upload or face or ID to access websites.
I think you misunderstood his post. It's generally un-British to suggest the UK is better in any regard whatsoever. I've no doubt he thinks the UK is just as bad if not worse but in different ways.
The UK is perhaps less competent at it's authoritarianism
I genuinely think the public sector being a bit hopeless is a major check on tyranny in the UK.
Ofcom (the communications regulator charged with imposing the censorship laws) literally maintains a public list of non-compliant websites that anyone who doesn't want to give their ID to a shady offshore firm can browse for example.
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I think he meant that as "I live in the UK where this is already bad, yet the EU still ended up worse.".
This is how I also read it.
I’m not sure how you got there unless you were ready for an argument already.
In the UK we've had an authoritarian Conservative government for 14 years, followed by an even more authoritarian Labour government, which we'll have until 2029.
In 2029 it's likely we'll have a more libertarian government:
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/...
Reform will repeal some of the awful legislation that's been passed over the last few years (e.g. Online Safety Act). They've been loud critics of government overreach.
https://www.ft.com/content/886ee83a-02ab-48b6-b557-857a38f30...
America also has a party that always runs on the idea of small government and restoring rights to the people. Every time they get power, they do the exact opposite.
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> Reform will repeal some of the awful legislation that's been passed over the last few years (e.g. Online Safety Act). They've been loud critics of government overreach.
A lot of politicians change when they get in power.
It is a massive assumption that reform will win the elections.
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3-4 years is political eternity.
"a more libertarian government"
As long as you are white British. If you're anything else you're probably going to be worse off under Farage.
It's a shame that if you want to vote for someone with different policies to the two main parties, you have to accept that you are also voting for an outspoken racist.
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> In 2029 it's likely we'll have a more libertarian government
Haha you're so funny.
If Reform get from, what is it right now, five -- or four, or six, depending on how the wind blows — MPs to 326 MPs, which is enough to secure the majority they think they are getting, then libertarian is not what that government will be.
It will be populist, white and significantly authoritarian, because pure tabloid authoritarian thuggery is the only possible strategy that could cause a swing larger than any in history, against two parties (labour and liberal democrat) who currently hold 472 seats and represent a sort of centrist blob between them.
And this is to say nothing of the challenge they will face finding 326 non-crazy, credible candidates for 326 very different parliamentary elections. And to say nothing of the foreign influence scandal that currently engulfs senior Reform figures or the catastrophic issues already affecting Reform councils like Kent. Do you think Reform could succeed without Farage? And do you think Farage's reputation is going to somehow be improved by the Nathan Gill situation?
I accept they will be the largest minority. But the parliamentary maths to get to an outright majority is really extreme; the system does not support such things easily.
Maybe they will get to largest minority and then campaign for PR/AV/STV, and maybe finally people will understand something like it is needed. But Farage will be a lot older in that election.
(It surprises me to see people who are so keen to believe that a council election wave is necessarily predictive of a national election wave because, what, somehow everything is different now? Why is it different?)
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> passes controversial legislation in such a short timeframe.
It did not pass.
I think the problem here is that you don't understand how the system works.
The EU parliament still would have to approve this for it to become legislation.
This is akin to a national government proposing a law, and the congress having to vote for it.
That could be a result of the Parliamentary style system. With multiple parties - each sharing a part of the government - proposals and alliances can shift rapidly. It all depends on how big the pie becomes for each to get a slice
Power sharing is very rare in the UK. What is more common is a party with a large majority with lots of infighting between factions of their party
Not usual, but two out of the last 20 governments is not what I would call very rare.
its more likely than it has been in a very long time with multiple smaller parties gaining seats. Nationalists in Scotland and Wales have been around a whole, and NI always had its own parties, but on top of that we now have Reform and the Greens making gains.
The UK keeps a register of non-crime hate incidents and invests its scarce police resources into harassing, arresting and punishing people for twitter posts.
That might well change:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kn54vj55xo.amp
Non-AMP link to help keep dirty monopolists at bay: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kn54vj55xo
Please don't use AMP.
And also: silently praying in public near an abortion center. The lady in question should have asked the policeman (as he was) "How would you define praying?". At least he'd maybe have paused for an interesting short discussion on semantics and more before for arresting her - as he did. https://youtu.be/wXURFRSUS9U
Two years ago and she has received damages however similar attitudes still abound with marked police disapproval of attempts to display the English National flag - in England.
Because that's what autocracies in anything but name usually do. Who's going to stop them?
The EU is more of a bureaucracy than a real autocracy. Lots of members with veto powers and the like.
There is a lot wrong with the EU (the system). Opaque power structures, backroom deals, corruption. But I wouldn't call it an autocracy.
Aristocracy is the correct word
> Lots of members with veto powers and the like.
Similar to the Political Bureau in former communist countries, but still an autocracy.
> But I wouldn't call it an autocracy.
It has most certainly started to walk and quack a lot like an autocratic duck, it wasn't the case 10 to 15 years ago, or not as visible, to say the least, but the pandemic and this recent war in Ukraine have changed that.
The EU Parliament, that has to vote to pass the law. Let's be better at commenting than Libertatea, circa 2010 (or The Daily Mail, for international readers).
The EU Parliament is a lame-duck thing, we both know that, let’s not pretend that this won’t pass at some point. It’s also not a parliament by definition, as it cannot propose any legislative measure, it can only propose “resolutions”, this is as lame-duck as it gets.
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