Comment by advisedwang
1 day ago
So many comments about the EU constantly re-trying the same law with minor tweaks, and about how legislatures do this in general. I wanted to provide an explanation for this behaviour.
The way legislation is expected to proceed in countries with parliamentary systems, especially with strong civil services, is that
1) a problem is identified. This can be the civil service detecting it on their own, petitioning from groups impacted by the problem (lobbying, the public etc).
2) The government prioritizes problems to solve according to political imperatives.
3) The civil service and/or parliamentary committees gather evidence on the problem and possible solutions.
4) the civil service and/or committee report on the issue. In practice this always finds the solution that the government wanted.
5) A bill is drafted based on the report.
6) The bill then proceeds through parliamentary committee, legislative votes, and whatever else is part of the lawmaking process.
When we see this issues fail, it's typically at step (6). But the problem still exists, and the issue is still on the agenda. It's still a priority to solve. So steps 4-6 are re-tried with different parameters that hopefully allow the bill to pass and the problem to be solved.
Just failing to pass parliament is not enough. You also need the political leadership to redirect their prioritization and implicit preferred solution.
I'm not saying this is good, just this is what happens.
Step 6 is entirely missing in the EU. The parliament doesn’t form a committee to debate and perhaps refine the law, it just votes on what is put before it.
The Parliament has many committees that do exactly what you're saying, while the Council meets in various configurations of national ministers depending on the law being voted on
Which makes this effect even strong, because the civil service and it's internal priorities are long lasting and don't change with elections.
> But the problem still exists, and the issue is still on the agenda. It's still a priority to solve.
People are pushing back on this every single time. Maybe it's time legislators read the room instead? Is there a step for this too?
Until legislators fear loosing their seats more than they desire a policy, they're not going listen to the people. That's why political manovering, lobbying, activism etc are part of the political process.
It's even worse for places like the EU that have a strong civil service or with a branch like the EC that isn't elected, because the processes above are very insulated from the general public
But for chat control the problem never existed in the first place.
Except the only need Chat control is fulfilling is the governments and bureaucrats need to control and check all civilian communications.