Comment by dgellow
1 day ago
It’s the council. We have to be clear which institution we are talking about within the EU, otherwise that doesn’t make any sense. The European Parliament already pushed back that proposal. The EU is made of a lot of different actors with their own agenda.
Here the council, with the help of the EPP party is doing that undemocratic maneuvering: They made it on purpose so that the parliament is unlikely to be able to push back a third time (all of that leaked a few days ago)
If the EU as a system has an undemocratic backdoor it's descriptively correct to call it undemocratic. Not to play too hard on the HN user stereotype, but you wouldn't call a computer system that is mostly secure other than a known privilege escalation exploit secure, would you?
Every single democratic system relies on norms at some level. Democratic isn’t a boolean flag. When the French prime minister is using the 49-3 rule to bypass the parliament that’s undemocratic, that doesn’t make the system itself undemocratic. When a US president is using an executive order to pass a law that’s undemocratic, that doesn’t make the system itself undemocratic. Here the maneuver goes against the spirit of democracy and against the expected norms, however the EU itself is democratic
If France has a way for the prime minister to bypass democracy that's undemocratic.
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>When a US president is using an executive order to pass a law
An executive order isn't a law. It is an instruction for an executive branch agency or committee.
https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/execu...
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No.
The way the EU is designed has nothing to do with the US or France. First the Parliament and Council (the bodies democratically elected) do not have power of legislative initiative.
Then the Commission, which is a "super" executive power, is not democratically elected. Unlike France or the US (the two you mentioned).
The EU has an architecture that is fundamentally different from the US or French system. In many way it is actually closer to something like the UN or PRC.
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> you wouldn't call a computer system that is mostly secure other than a known privilege escalation exploit secure, would you?
People do this all the time, regardless of whether or not they're right or wrong. "This product I own is definitely secure because the marketing says so, even if the CVEs prove me wrong" is a common sentiment online and in real life.
Not to play too hard on the computing-detatched normie stereotype, but this type of surveillance is bound to succeed due to their apathy. We've seen this play out in the US before, and it's always a shoo-in for the surveillance legislation. Security, privacy and fairness doesn't even cross most people's minds anymore.
> The European Parliament already pushed back that proposal. The EU is made of a lot of different actors with their own agenda.
It doesn't matter how the European parliament voted.
https://www.politico.eu/article/president-vs-parliament-robe...
It does matter, the parliament vote is precisely what pushed the council/EPP to do their most recent push in such a disgusting, undemocratic way. The parliament still has a say, but elected are likely to already be on vacation (which is another dumb thing, but what the bad actors here are actively taking advantage of)