Comment by budududuroiu
2 days ago
Roberta Metsola's actions this week jeopardise the legitimacy of the EU project as a whole.
It's clear that member countries use the EU as a blame-laundering mechanism to pass domestically unpopular laws, but the forcing of this vote under the urgency procedure that requires absolute majority to reject, on the last EP session before summer break is so blatant that it might awaken people that might've overlooked the structural failures of the EU and finally radicalise them
EDIT: bad wording, it's not that the urgency procedure causes the voting to require absolute majority, it's that an absolute majority second-reading is forced through an emergency procedure which is designed for first readings of legislation that's the implied meaning above
I'm really surprised at the hurry. The EU, and many EU governments, have been ramming through deeply unpopular legislation at a breakneck pace for no apparent reason, lately.
It feels like the last turn in a board game where everyone is busy taking points with no regard for the impact of the decisions on the theoretical next turn - because there is no next turn. Its really weird.
> blame-laundering mechanism
Also, I'm stealing this.
> at a breakneck pace for no apparent reason, lately.
This isn't surprising to me at all.
The World Cup is on, and it draws attention away from politics. This has been a pretty common observable pattern for as long as I can remember.
At least in some member states, that's a well used pattern when the soccer world cup is on (as in: people are focused on something else). Which at least has been going on in the last weeks.
The reason is more than apparent.
So long freedom, it’s been nice living in STASI free society for a while. Too bad power attracts the people who will make sure they keep it in their hands.
Honestly where do you even go if you want to get out from under this? The US was the option, but is clearly circling the drain. The EU is democracy theater at best, a democratic mandate that can be set aside any time it's inconvenient for Ashton Kutcher, and speedrunning the rebuilding of a new Soviet Union. Feels like a matter of time until they start building a new wall to keep you from leaving.
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Whenever you see people complaining that the EU is "too slow", more often than not it's because they benefit directly from EU rushing things without thinking.
Multiple active wars on the global stage, huge changes in tariff and job impacts, large scale shipping and oil impacts.
I’m not saying this legislation impacts any of this positively or negatively, but we can’t pretend the prior world order isn’t making some drastic changes lately. Governments are slow to change laws but I would expect much of the current push has actual ties to the larger global shifts.
for no apparent rason? the way they are preparing to bring the population into a war hardly can be any more apparent...
War requires industry. But we've deindustrialised and outsourced the manufacture of almost everything to China.
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War is less imminent now than ever. Ukraine has caused a ton of damage to Russia and at this point the Kremlin has more to worry about than EU countries (pretty much every Russian government ever is brought down from within).
No, leftist governments in the EU have failed to provide prosperity and failed in all their promises, now they're going for total control to try to stay in power.
Look at France, as soon as Le Pen was cleared to run for the presidency they start talking about anti "misinformation" laws...
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Apparent? Unless Russia attacks there will be no war, it is not the US who willy nilly attacks others.
> I'm really surprised at the hurry.
Well, once you realise that the so-called "EU parliament" is nothing but a lobbyist group (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...) it is no longer surprising. To me nothing here is surprising, neither the hurry nor any slowness.
Lobbyists are winning the war.
>with no regard for the impact of the decisions on the theoretical next turn
They know the impact of the decisions: more power for them as bodies.
My guess is that with non-left political movements on the rise better surveillance tools were needed to prevent them from winning the elections around europe.
I really don’t but any other reason, as other tools (legal and technological) are already in place.
If you look at who voted for chat control approval you would find that it's majority the currently in power centre right parties. The more far right or left you go the more likely they were against. It's like the one issue where AfD, die Linke and Greens are aligned. That suggests that it's most likely hard lobby that bribes the established class.
Nt being able to scan personal communications would break big tech platforms main monetisation strategy (selling peoples data).
None of these will be used to attack the far-right parties on the right though. They barely investigate those parties in the individual countries, but they focus more on the moderate left already.
To me it seems like the minority would be far more interested in implementing surveillance tools so they can target the majority in order to try and gain and maintain power.
The reason they do this is preparation for war. Also, foreign influence bots and hostile active measures.
It's a US data pump, and the EU is a bunch of vassal states. That's the hurry, shutting down the data flow because the permissive legislation runs out is not allowed.
I think that's a little naive. This sort of legislation is much more useful in terms of managing the local population and what they are allowed to talk about than it is in terms of profit—except, I suppose, in the sense that holding companies liable for what is said with their software is unprofitable.
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> ramming through deeply unpopular legislation at a breakneck pace for no apparent reason, lately
It's only a matter of time before EU-skeptical opposition parties achieve absolute majorities in critical EU constituency states. They're aware of this fact and are trying to adopt as much of their agenda as possible in the time they have remaining.
Didn't Steve Bannon do a tour in Europe recently to dispense some of his strategy?
This smells like him, honestly.
> at a breakneck pace for no apparent reason
So many reasons: unpopular wars in the Middle East, repeated embarrassments in international arena, domestic unrest, decadent elites…
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>for no apparent reason, lately.
for some godforsaken reason left-lib parties in europe think accepting infinity migrants forever is the most important thing to do
this is becoming more and more unpopular with the voters, leading to right wing parties surging across europe (Denmark, which has an immigration restrictionist left wing government doesnt seem to have an issue here, true mystery)
obviously the solution here is total control of the internet, so that you can suppress dissent
Denmark was one of the main countries pushing for Chat Control 2.0 ...
>for some godforsaken reason left-lib parties in europe think accepting infinity migrants forever is the most important thing to do
be warned citizen, you are committing a serious wrong and hate think and will hence be labeled nazi, fascist or any other dehumanizing word to legitimize violence against you. Please correct your mistake to protect our democracy.
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In Canada, there's been a lot of talk about how immigration, "broke the Canadian consensus," around immigration as a good thing.
The problem is, there never was a consensus around immigration. The Liberals own stats prove that. What there was was a consensus around multiculturalism and tolerance.
Immigration itself, was always split evenly among three camps in Canada: those who want more, those who want less, and those who think we have the right amount.
Trudeau & his fake leftist brigade many have ruined multiculturalism for a large portion of Canadians, permanently.
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> for some godforsaken reason left-lib parties in europe think accepting infinity migrants forever is the most important thing to do
This is completely BS. Nobody wants to let in unlimited migrants. This is not a goal of anyone, including the left-most left. In fact on the left we are very aware that our welfare systems can't support unlimited people.
The left wing parties just wish to honour existing international treaties which we have signed to allow genuine asylum seekers. There's processes in places to determine whether they deserve this. The right just want to turn their boats back as they approach (pushback) which is literally illegal.
It's important to realise though that asylum seekers are not the root cause of most of our issues even though they are portrayed as such by the right in deflection from the real issues. For example here in Holland the biggest societal issue is the farmers who pollute too many nitrogen compounds and that causes housing projects to be put on hold. The number of asylum seekers has been steadily decreasing over the years.
But farmers make up a huge piece of the right wing so they'll never take ownership of the problem. Better to deflect on someone else.
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unpopular with whom?
Every time HN posts another one of these privacy-invading EU regulations, a bunch of pro-bureaucracy people are in here cheering on regulations and knocking down anyone who suggests that maybe this time they've gone too far.
Do they? What I read now and in the past is mostly Americans being proud somehow (with Trump doing whatever he feels like to fill his family's pockets).
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> it might awaken people that might've overlooked the structural failures of the EU and finally radicalise them
Haha, no. As long as there is bread and circus, nothing wil happen.
well, bread is running our at beakneck speed...
that's the reason they are busy igniting a war by the time the defaulting begins, so that there's some external boogieman to blame instead of them...
This removes circus from the children.
Children are politically irrelevant.
This comment does not add any value to the discussion.
PS: Sorry, but "haha nothing matters" cynicism does NOT add anything to the discussion. In fact it straightforwardly breaks a whole bunch of HN guidelines: "Be curious", "Don't be generically negative", "Don't be snarky", "Don't post shallow dismissals", etc. This forum is supposed to be better than the R-site.
Yes it does. Your comment does not add any value to the discussion.
Many of us find it difficult to be relentlessly positive as we watch organizations that constantly paint themselves as the epitome of democracy act in a way counter to the repeatedly-expressed will of the people. I cannot smile my way into fascism.
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I think I'm one of those to whom you refer (except that I'm already "awake", or at least I like to think so). I'm normally pro-EU but this chat control is anathema to me. I'll be voting anti-EU in future I think.
> I'll be voting anti-EU in future I think.
You shouldn't go that far. Simply don't vote for the EPP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_People%27s_Party_Grou...) in your country. They are the driving force behind this. Other parties have mostly voted against this (depending on the country)
I'm wondering when we will get the hint that voting isn't fixing these problems. our systems of government appears, to me, that they have been taken over by special interests. If we want things to change, we have to get involved. I'm sure that looks different for everyone but we clearly need people we can trust in government institutions.
Yeah, this is also a step too far for me. The EU has also done good things, like GDPR, right to repair, fining big tech again and again ... but it rarely follows up as much as it needs to.
The problem is though, that countries in the EU by themselves are economically not powerful enough, to hold up any ethical values against the giants US and China. So we need some alternative to the EU, some other union, that at least contains the economically most powerful EU countries, so that we have enough economical weight, that the other big players cannot simply push us around. Currently, the EU seems to be hellbent on losing its support. But how to prevent that other union to go down the same road?
Anyway, it seems clear, that we can no longer allow EU decision makers to make rules for us. They are not to be trusted.
The alternatives are also not to be trusted: if the EU falls we will have war between EU countries and hitlers and francos back in their seats but now with mass AI; Hello Frank, we detected in your email sent 21 years ago that you made fun of Mr Klein, his son, our glorious leader, has auto signed the documents for you to be sent to NeoWitz where you will spend the short remainder of your life.
> I'll be voting anti-EU in future I think.
You mean the far right that talks about EU all the time and loves when EU does things like this?
To understand whether/to what extent this is brazen, I'd be interested to learn the reasoning why urgency procedures are possible, and in particular, why the apparent majority against shouldn't have been enough, and what is needed to classify something as urgent.
Afaik, EU rules provide for urgent procedure only for proposals at first reading, while here it was used to compress a second reading vote and skip committee, just perfectly timed for the last sitting before recess.
The absolute majority seems to be an anti-paralysis instrument, where the onus is on the Parliament to reject something put in motion by the Council. I think the the asymmetry is that a vote to trigger the urgency procedure only requires a simple majority, whereas a rejection of that same legislation requires absolute majority.
To my reading, this reinforces the idea that Parliament is designed to be more of a rubber stamp for the Council.
Thanks. Do you know then why of the majority that voted against today, enough people voted in favour of the urgency procedure?
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The urgency procedure is not the issue here, the problem is that this was Parliament's second reading, and the treaties (article 294 TFEU) say:
> Second reading
> 7. If, within three months of such communication, the European Parliament:
> (a) approves the Council's position at first reading or has not taken a decision, the act concerned shall be deemed to have been adopted in the wording which corresponds to the position of the Council;
> (b) rejects, by a majority of its component members, the Council's position at first reading, the proposed act shall be deemed not to have been adopted;
> (c) proposes, by a majority of its component members, amendments to the Council's position at first reading, the text thus amended shall be forwarded to the Council and to the Commission, which shall deliver an opinion on those amendments.
It was the second reading, but was it also treated as such? (Because if so, it sounds like this would have been a rejection?) If not, what is the steelmanned reason for doing so?
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I don’t understand how a governing system requires a majority to reject a change to the status quo. The status quo must be maintained unless a majority decides to change the status quo.
It is the equivalent of having a gas pedal in a car that is fully activated unless you put your foot down.
The urgency procedure has nothing to do with the absolute majority requirement. It's necessary because, in the second reading, the Parliament should have an absolute majority to reject or amend the Council (i.e. the governments of the member states) position but only a simple majority to approve it
Yes, this basically means the EU pushed a new censorship regulation using lawfare tricks without ever having a majority vote for the proposal.
If it's not a dictatorship, a regime, a shithole, a kleptocracy, or whatever name they use for a government they don't like, I don't know what it is.
The regulation was rejected today with 314 votes against, 276 in favor, and 17 abstentions, but because of Metsola's lawfare that classified this regulation as under an "urgent procedure", an absolute majority was required to reject.
I wonder if the abstentions are counting "missing MEPs" or MEPs present but who did not vote
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Chat Control 2.0 is the censorship regulation. Chat Control 1.0 just legalized what Facebook was doing anyway.
Sure, then just let the normal legislative process run its course, no need to bleed political capital and get an already polarised electorate to hate the EU even more by shoving this legislation through in this way.
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It's absolutely legitimate to be upset. However, identifying a lawfare trick in a close vote to a dictatorship is serious hyperbole. I'm afraid that's counterproductive.
Close vote?
They passed a regulation with 276 votes in favor, 314 votes against, and 17 abstained. The minority decided instead of the majority.
If this is not a dictatorship, what is it then? In any case, it has nothing to do with the democracy.
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They've been doing this with unpopular votes since the inception of the EU, nothing new and people definitely haven't woken up, unfortunately.
Its honestly a bit sad that this in particular got people up in arms on social media, nobody gave a single shit when they sacrifice millions of people and entire nations on the periphery to their death cult of market orthodoxy.
The media is barely covering it at all, the sheep are well asleep, online some just lucid dream about the democracy they never had.
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What should worry everybody is the big picture (trying to abstract from politics, ideologies and specific situation). In recent years we had:
- Europe is now at war with Russia (neighbor)
- Its relationship with the US is rapidly deteriorating (main partner, de facto protector)
- Its relationship with China is also rapidly deteriorating
- It is getting very antagonistic with it own citizen and some individual member countries (such as Hungaria or Romania recently)
So there are a lot of justifications in each case but the overall picture is worrisome. You can't be antagonistic with everyone.
There is a reason why the North Korean regime is still around, they never forgot they need to keep a good relationship with at least one powerful ally.
Isn't it interesting that if you remove the US from that list, it all aligns with US foreign policy? How fortuitous that EU interests just happen to coincide so well with our American friends.
US is now allied with Russia though. Or at least its president acts as if it was.
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> There is a reason why the North Korean regime is still around
Nukes
> - Its relationship with China is also rapidly deteriorating
For which there is no good reason and which is extremely stupid
There has been zero aggression from China towards Europe and zero chance of military confrontation.
Most of the sanctions that were implemented under pressure from Us have backfired on Europe (but not so much on US)
European politicians are going around the world and telling India not to trade with Russia while Israel trades with Russia, etc.
EU is doing some concerning moves but, looking at your points, Russia attacked Ukraine. EU is not at war with Russia, only supporting Ukraine.
Second, the relationship with US is deteriorating due to Trump. As a matter of fact all US relationships are deteriorating for the same reason. Where have you been the past years? Im not going to bother to respond to the following points because you mix some reality with propaganda and seem to live in a paralel reality.
Yeah US is threatening to invade and take over Canada, Greenland, I mean no wonder the alliance is no longer strong right?
And the internal struggles are indeed a problem, this is due to the extreme right which has completely taken over America (and is sponsored by Russia). It was good to see the Hungarians came to their senses but it's worrying that the EU doesn't have a mechanism to expel countries.
The problem is who do we ally with that we can trust now. Russia and America obviously not. Canada yes but they're not big. China just serves its own interests, they will never care about a partnership. They just want our money to buy their products, nothing else.
I think South America is another potential one and the EU is trying to connect there with eg Mercosur. But America is sponsoring the extreme right there too as you can see in Honduras and Colombia recently. And in Venezuela of course.
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EU is at war with Russia, just that both sides are too cowardly to say it openly.
They didn't attribute any fault to these patterns, just said the pattern itself is concerning. It is bad for the EU to be mistreated by the US!