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Comment by bjoli | Hacker News Reader

Is there any country in Europe not passing authoritarian laws?

In Sweden the current government is on its way to defund the largest opposition party.

The swedish riksdag recebtly (with broad support) changed the constitution to limit the freedom of speech.

Poland and Hungary are shitfests, with almost complete political control of the justice system.

Spain has increased the ability to give large civil fines, seemingly disconnected from the regular juridical process (please correct me on this one. My Spanish is sub-par).

Edit: my poland name-calling was apparently uncalled for. There are other bad things going on, with Kaczyński at the rudder.

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It's just the trend of government. First there is chaos which sheds all law and order and supplants it with something else. Then it trends towards authoritarianism. Simple as that. Best case scenario is the trend is slow and a little of that chaos keeps it in check for a while.

It's a cliche at this point but this reality is what the American constitution was designed to combat.

Why is it a tendency of government? In most instances I see it as a result of laws passed by democratically elected representatives.

>Poland and Hungary are shitfests, with almost complete political control of the justice system.

Not really true in Poland. They kinda tried to take it over from other political side, but failed, hard.

What's worst is that Polish justice system is, and always was, a shitshow in general - judges have deadlines, but no penalties for ignoring them... and they are only judged by other judges. Complaining can get your case stonewalled, and there are plenty of catch-22 situations where you can't do anything.

And what current ruling party incompetently did basically destroyed any chances of that changing in next 10-20 years, or more.

Gross incompetence is the theme of current government.

Don't forget Switzerland its revision of surveillance powers which would allow intelligence agencies to snoop around your doctor's office.

> The swedish riksdag recebtly (with broad support) changed the constitution to limit the freedom of speech.

Source?

There's been a recurring theme where a Danish right wing extremist named Rasmus Paludan crosses the border every once in a while and burn's the Quran outside of various embassies for muslim-majority countries.

In 2020 there was a proposal to make it illegal on the basis of the consistent consequences of these actions (riots, damaged international relations, increased threat profile against the country ect). AFAIK, this proposal fizzled out and never lead anywhere.

Here's a source: https://www.riedia.com/article/en/spy-law-hampers-swedish-pr...

> In Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) Press Freedom Index 2023, Sweden dropped one spot and ranks fourth. One reason is the new law against foreign espionage, which came into effect on January 1st of this year.

> The law, which makes it a crime to disclose information that may damage Sweden's relations with other states or organizations, has already had an impact on journalism.

> Last week, SVT chose to stop a publication for the first time citing the spy law, despite the fact that exceptions are allowed for journalistic purposes. The news concerned map images from the Pentagon Leak regarding Ukrainian energy supply.

This is incorrect: the Swedish police tried to ban Quran burning, which is mainly related to a Danish right-wing extremist, but it got quickly overturned by a court. Instead, they are trying to appease the authoritarian Erdogan with a new terrorism law so that he will let Sweden into the NATO. (From a quick overview, the law is not that bad; e.g. it mainly outlaws belonging to a terrorist group, etc.). Likewise, in Finland the local police made an absurd decision to accuse a protestor of defamation from carrying an Erdogan doll. There are no grounds whatsoever for such a decision in Finnish law.

In general, these things indicate how the much cherished and hard-fought rights can be sacrificed at the altar of geopolitics and/or security.

The changing tide in Sweden seems to be lost on those evaluating its level of freedom -- it ranks 4 on RSF's press freedom index, perfect marks on Freedom House, etc.

"In Sweden the current government is on its way to defund the largest opposition party"

Please attempt to be more nuanced.

> Poland and Hungary are shitfests, with almost complete political control of the justice system.

That's not exactly true, Poland is a country where most of the judges are basically in open rebellion against the current government, and the government can't do shit about it.

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