Comment by miroljub
2 days ago
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
The EU parliament has 720 representatives (at the moment 719, one seat is vacant apparently), so 113 representatives didn't show up for the vote. The absolute majority would've been reached with 361 votes.
And there were a lot of them. Some i assume just couldn't give a fuck and are on vacation. The others for sure did it to help approval while keeping "clean" to their audience.
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.
> no need to bleed political capital
I'm not sure the EU needs to worry about political capital in the way that many national and regional governments do. Power moves through negotiations between institutions, party groups, lobbyists, activists, and heads of government rather than through anything voters can trace. If one is being unkind, it's basically backroom deals all the way down. Naturally, the EU has more respectable terms for this sort of thing, like "trilogue".
Look at how the President of the European Commission got her job in 2019 - there was an election campaign in which major parties presented lead candidates for the post and she wasn't one of them, then post-election - ta da - she's nominiated for the post and there's a confirmatory vote in the Parliament on which the ballot paper had precisely one name listed - hers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48853746
https://www.alamy.com/16-july-2019-france-france-straburg-a-...
8 replies →
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.
My point is that this was a minority of 46.7% making that decision (because of a technicality that has been pointed out already). In a dictatorship, a minority of 1 against a million or more makes all the decisions. Even though you can say 46.7% and 0.0001% are both below 50%, it's missing a lot of nuance to claim they are of the same nature.
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