> Despite today’s victory, further procedural steps by EU governments cannot be completely ruled out. Most of all, the trilogue negotiations on a permanent child protection regulation (Chat Control 2.0) are continuing under severe time pressure. There, too, EU governments continue to insist on their demand for “voluntary” indiscriminate Chat Control.
> Furthermore, the next massive threat to digital civil liberties is already on the agenda: Next up in the ongoing trilogue, lawmakers will negotiate whether messenger and chat services, as well as app stores, will be legally obliged to implement age verification. This would require users to provide ID documents or submit to facial scans, effectively making anonymous communication impossible and severely endangering vulnerable groups such as whistleblowers and persecuted individuals.
> We should all just leave it and maybe try again in a few generations with entirely new premises.
Nice try troll. Given your views and username might it be a stretch to assume you align more with the eastern side of governance ?
> At this point, the EU can't be fixed. It has to be abandoned completely, both as an idea and as an implementation. EU requirements were wrong, architecture was worse, and the implementation was the worst.
> They literally just voted it down. Twice in 2 days.
And they will try again tomorrow. Until it passes.
> Also compared to whom?
Why compare? The fact that there are worse regimes than the EU doesn't make the EU even a single bit better. Lesser evil is still evil. Let us strive for good.
So in summary: because the law was avoided today, the EU needs to be abolished? Weird take.
You can see it the other way around, without the EU, Denmark and others would have already implemented ChatControl in their country. This is driven by member states (Denmark), not the parliament, after all.
> So in summary: because the law was avoided today, the EU needs to be abolished? Weird take.
There are many reasons to abolish the EU, but the topic here is chat control.
> You can see it the other way around, without the EU, Denmark and others would have already implemented ChatControl in their country. This is driven by member states (Denmark), not the parliament, after all.
Would they? We don't know. Would the government of Denmark be ready to commit political suicide by insisting again and again on something so unpopular?
The whole premise of the EU is to allow various unelected interest groups to push unpopular regulation to the EU member states without any consequences.
> With every new proposal, every vote, they are closer to the totalitarian regime. Proposals can be declined a million times, but the EU regime is always finding sneakier and more manipulative ways to push again and again.
... I mean this is how all parliamentary systems work. It's more _visible_ in the EU than in others, I think, because the council/commission are more willing to put forward things that they don't really think the parliament will go for (in many parliamentary systems, realistically the executive will be reluctant to put forward stuff where they think they'll lose the vote in parliament).
But there's not really a huge difference; it would just be _quieter_ in most parliamentary systems, and you wouldn't really hear anything about it until the executive had their votes in place, brought it forward, and passed it. I actually kind of prefer the EU system, in that it tends to happen more out in the open, which allows for public comment. And public comment and pressure is a huge deal for this sort of thing; most parliamentarians, on things they don't understand, will vote whatever way their party is voting. But if it becomes clear that their constituents care about it, they may actually have to think about it, and that's half the battle.
The EU is fundamentally flawed. There are no checks and balances, and its only democratic if you squint and look at it the right way. People need to directly elect the MPs, directly elect some kind of president. They have no accountability, no checks and balances.
I agree there is a strong democratic deficit in the current EU governance structure, but I disagree with a proposal such as
> directly elect some kind of president
We do not need a president with over-powers, and electing directly one does not solve anything for democracy, as the recent history in countries like the US and France shows. The point of directly electing a president is giving that role more power. The current structure in the EU is not so much president-centric either executive or legislative wise, but more like comission-centric, which is what imo has the biggest problem in terms of democracy in the EU.
I get the impression you're coming at it from a US perspective, and it's not that, and doesn't intend to be for now. The president is elected by majority of the MP's who have been elected by the people of their respective countries. Almost like the US electorial system, except it's done internally because people generally only vote for their own best interests and not that of the entirety.
Perfect, no, it can be slow and a lot of red tape, but what system isn't flawed.
The commission is checked by the parliament is checked by the council is checked by the commission. Most other national organizations only have one check - Germany, for example, only has the Bundesrat as a check of the Bundestag.
Checks and balances means some folks should NOT be directly elected. if everyone is <directly elected>, then you have <directly elected> checked and balanced by <directly elected>. Which is to say, not at all. :-P
You could have a system where everyone is directly elected while keeping checks and balances, if voting were restricted, eg. maybe everyone can vote for a president/prime minister, but only non-teachers can vote for an education minister, and only non-finance people can vote for something like the Fed chief, etc. The point being the checks and balances now happen because other groups keep your group in check by voting.
Absolutely! That does keep some of the checks. You can do better than that though!
It's like on the Apollo missions where some parts were made by two completely different manufacturers and worked completely differently.
Hybrid political systems are best. Of course if we like democracy (and most people do), then that should be the most common kind of component. But I'd still like to have some different paradigms mixed into the system. And that's exactly what most modern constitutions do, for better or for worse.
We do? What did you think the European Parliament elections every four years were for?
> directly elect some kind of president.
Why? Nowhere in Western Europe except very arguably France (France, as always, has to be a bit weird about everything, and has a hybrid system) has a directly elected executive. True executive presidential systems are only really a thing in the Americas and Africa (plus Russia, these days).
Like, in terms of big countries with a true executive presidency, you’re basically looking at the US, Russia and Brazil. I’m, er, not sure we should be modeling ourselves on those paragons of democracy.
> They have no accountability, no checks and balances.
The parliament has the same accountability and checks and balances as any national parliament, more or less (more than some, as the ECJ is more effective and independent than many national supreme courts).
How badly would you say the council or commission have to mess things up before they saw any voter-initiated repercussions what so ever with a system of accountability that requires voters to consider punishing the council or comission more important than their own national elections?
If accountability is to work, it has to be more than an abstract theoretical possibility.
That's a system of accountability in name but not in practice.
Even if there was an option in the national elections that didn't want this stuff, convincing a majority of voters to disregard national politics for an election cycle to have an imperceptibly small impact on the council members is such an unlikely outcome the council or comission would de facto be committing genocides before voters would be mobilized, and even then it's unlikely they'd face any repercussions.
That's the parliament. What about the council and the commission? Am I not allowed to hold them accountable? Does my power as a citizen only extend to a fourth of the balance of power?
They keep getting away with these attrition tactics with regards to implementing near Stasi levels communication surveillance. What about the day they're pushing to give the council unlimited powers, or to abolish voting rights, or to purge jews?
The council is made up of heads of state, so no more undemocratic than your own countries executive, and the commission is selected by the Council and approved by the EU parliament.
That's pretty much how it works; there's generally no way, in a modern parliamentary democracy to say "no, and also you can never discuss it again". You could put it in the constitution, but honestly there's a decent argument that parts of chat control would violate the EU's can't-believe-it's-not-a-constitution (the Lisbon Treaty is essentially a constitution, but is not referred to as such because it annoys nationalists) in any case and ultimately be struck down by the ECJ, like the Data Retention Directive was.
Constituional cours are a last defense against bad laws though and should not be the first one - they are not designed to be fast enough to prevent a lot of damage being done before they strike something down.
If something in 'Chat Control' is so fundamental that it should lead to the law not even being brought up for discussion (privacy), then that 'right' should be more clearly defined in the constitution, or constitution like structure.
It's when laws can exist, but simply have bad implementations, where you obviously can't jump to an amendment process.
The first defense is that the Council of the EU (formed by government ministers of the member states) and the European Parliament (elected directly by EU citizens) have to agree on the legislation. And while the council is staffed by career politicians, the parliament is a more diverse group that's generally a bit closer to the average person
From the point of view of the individual, the parliament is our first defense. And this is an example of it working
So, in the end a big majority of the conservative/liberal faction (EPP) voted against, and the vast majority of the social democractic faction (S&D) voted for chat control.
Just pointing this out because yesterday there was the myth around that "chat control is pushed by the conservatives", obscuring the actual political dynamics in the EU about it.
EPP proposed it, but then it got amended (ie toned down) so much that they turned on their own proposal. This apparently happens quite a lot. So the way I understand it is they turned it down not because they thought it was bad, but because they didn't think it was bad enough.
> So, in the end a big majority of the conservative/liberal faction (EPP) voted against, and the vast majority of the social democractic faction (S&D) voted for chat control.
EPP wanted indiscriminate scanning instead, not targeted one.
There's also the DDR and Stasi as a counter example if anyone think mass surveillance is incompatible with socialism.
Mass surveillance isn't really a question that projects well onto the left-right scale, and attempting to make it fit a left-right question is more likely to distract than provide a useful understanding.
> Furthermore, the next massive threat to digital civil liberties is already on the agenda: Next up in the ongoing trilogue, lawmakers will negotiate whether messenger and chat services, as well as app stores, will be legally obliged to implement age verification. This would require users to provide ID documents or submit to facial scans, effectively making anonymous communication impossible and severely endangering vulnerable groups such as whistleblowers and persecuted individuals.
Nice try troll. Given your views and username might it be a stretch to assume you align more with the eastern side of governance ?
> At this point, the EU can't be fixed. It has to be abandoned completely, both as an idea and as an implementation. EU requirements were wrong, architecture was worse, and the implementation was the worst.
Dying to see your citations for these.
And they will try again tomorrow. Until it passes.
> Also compared to whom?
Why compare? The fact that there are worse regimes than the EU doesn't make the EU even a single bit better. Lesser evil is still evil. Let us strive for good.
You're inverting roles here.
Just look at the UK and how crazy they've gone now that the EU can't shoot their ideas down anymore.
You can see it the other way around, without the EU, Denmark and others would have already implemented ChatControl in their country. This is driven by member states (Denmark), not the parliament, after all.
There are many reasons to abolish the EU, but the topic here is chat control.
> You can see it the other way around, without the EU, Denmark and others would have already implemented ChatControl in their country. This is driven by member states (Denmark), not the parliament, after all.
Would they? We don't know. Would the government of Denmark be ready to commit political suicide by insisting again and again on something so unpopular?
The whole premise of the EU is to allow various unelected interest groups to push unpopular regulation to the EU member states without any consequences.
> insisting again and again on something so unpopular?
Didn't the UK do exactly this?
... I mean this is how all parliamentary systems work. It's more _visible_ in the EU than in others, I think, because the council/commission are more willing to put forward things that they don't really think the parliament will go for (in many parliamentary systems, realistically the executive will be reluctant to put forward stuff where they think they'll lose the vote in parliament).
But there's not really a huge difference; it would just be _quieter_ in most parliamentary systems, and you wouldn't really hear anything about it until the executive had their votes in place, brought it forward, and passed it. I actually kind of prefer the EU system, in that it tends to happen more out in the open, which allows for public comment. And public comment and pressure is a huge deal for this sort of thing; most parliamentarians, on things they don't understand, will vote whatever way their party is voting. But if it becomes clear that their constituents care about it, they may actually have to think about it, and that's half the battle.
> directly elect some kind of president
We do not need a president with over-powers, and electing directly one does not solve anything for democracy, as the recent history in countries like the US and France shows. The point of directly electing a president is giving that role more power. The current structure in the EU is not so much president-centric either executive or legislative wise, but more like comission-centric, which is what imo has the biggest problem in terms of democracy in the EU.
They do.
> directly elect some kind of president
I get the impression you're coming at it from a US perspective, and it's not that, and doesn't intend to be for now. The president is elected by majority of the MP's who have been elected by the people of their respective countries. Almost like the US electorial system, except it's done internally because people generally only vote for their own best interests and not that of the entirety.
Perfect, no, it can be slow and a lot of red tape, but what system isn't flawed.
It's like on the Apollo missions where some parts were made by two completely different manufacturers and worked completely differently.
Hybrid political systems are best. Of course if we like democracy (and most people do), then that should be the most common kind of component. But I'd still like to have some different paradigms mixed into the system. And that's exactly what most modern constitutions do, for better or for worse.
Many EU nations are not presidential, and personally I prefer parliamentary republics than presidential ones.
...
We do? What did you think the European Parliament elections every four years were for?
> directly elect some kind of president.
Why? Nowhere in Western Europe except very arguably France (France, as always, has to be a bit weird about everything, and has a hybrid system) has a directly elected executive. True executive presidential systems are only really a thing in the Americas and Africa (plus Russia, these days).
Like, in terms of big countries with a true executive presidency, you’re basically looking at the US, Russia and Brazil. I’m, er, not sure we should be modeling ourselves on those paragons of democracy.
> They have no accountability, no checks and balances.
The parliament has the same accountability and checks and balances as any national parliament, more or less (more than some, as the ECJ is more effective and independent than many national supreme courts).
Probably it is not taught as part of the curriculum in Russia.
You're missing a [citation needed] on that.
If accountability is to work, it has to be more than an abstract theoretical possibility.
Even if there was an option in the national elections that didn't want this stuff, convincing a majority of voters to disregard national politics for an election cycle to have an imperceptibly small impact on the council members is such an unlikely outcome the council or comission would de facto be committing genocides before voters would be mobilized, and even then it's unlikely they'd face any repercussions.
Why do you keep lying?
They keep getting away with these attrition tactics with regards to implementing near Stasi levels communication surveillance. What about the day they're pushing to give the council unlimited powers, or to abolish voting rights, or to purge jews?
It's when laws can exist, but simply have bad implementations, where you obviously can't jump to an amendment process.
From the point of view of the individual, the parliament is our first defense. And this is an example of it working
At the end of the day you still need people to actually believe it, for whatever "it" is.
https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/189270
Just pointing this out because yesterday there was the myth around that "chat control is pushed by the conservatives", obscuring the actual political dynamics in the EU about it.
EPP wanted indiscriminate scanning instead, not targeted one.
Mass surveillance isn't really a question that projects well onto the left-right scale, and attempting to make it fit a left-right question is more likely to distract than provide a useful understanding.
While your examples were on the economic left, they were clearly authoritarian.