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Comment by bigfudge | Hacker News Reader

For context for non EU people:

> As the commission is the executive branch, candidates are chosen individually by the 27 national governments. Within the EU, the legitimacy of the commission is mainly drawn from the vote of approval that is required from the European Parliament, along with its power to dismiss the body.

So, the part of the EU appointed by member governments is the part driving this. The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by national governments.

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>The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by national governments.

But if the representatives are chosen by the, presumably, democratically elected governments how are they "anti-democratic". Unless representative democracies are inherently undemocratic (and therefore most European government themselves undemocratic), I fail to see how this can be described as "anti-democratic".

In basically every democracy there is a way for the elected representatives to push through legislation which is unpopular or only supported by a small portion of the population. But this is an intentional feature.

If you read >The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by national governments. as >The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by democratically elected national governments.

This is a perfectly fine statement. The policy is argued to be anti-democratic because of its substance, not because of how democratic the process is by which it is adopted.

A measure with broad popular support can be anti-democratic, a measure only supported by a small portion of the population can be pro-democratic. It's orthogonal and if anything there is an inverse correlation.

The issue of chat control is also orthogonal to it's "democracy". It is neither democratic nor anti-democratic. It obviously in no way invalidates people's rights to determine their government, labeling arbitrary issues as "anti-democratic" just because you don't like them is very unhelpful.

Nonsense. Chat control is prior constraint of speech. You can't argue that automated content filters are not censorship. You can agree with the ends (or what content is filtered, and even the governance), but the means themselves are thoroughly anti-democratic. And rife for abuse.

If this issue got put to a straight referendum, and won >80% of the vote, would it then be democratic?

See my earlier comment.

This is simple stuff.

Are you guys being disingenuous?

The problem is they see democracy as only the power of the people and not the power of the people in humanitarian context. So if 80% want to kill 20% that’s ok with them but wouldn’t be ok with people with a humanitarian democracy view.

Tyrannical democracy vs humanitarian democracy? (Tyranny of the masses)

Would you apply same approach to abortion laws? Because technically it is legal killing people.

Without expressing my stance on this policy itself: Many measures can be reasonably called "democratic" or "anti-democratic" because they have the potential to affect the ability of the populace to express dissent, and organise political opposition, or because it is seen of creating the tools for the government to create a chilling effect in that respect. As such, it is not at all "obvious" that everyone will agree that it does not affect peoples democratic rights, whether you think so or not.

> It obviously in no way invalidates people's rights to determine their government

But it can do that, if / when it starts getting misused.

There was this "SS not all criminals" political party, AfD in Germany, that got lots of votes during the EU elections. AfD + Chat Control is not any good

Not really

The member states are as much a part of the EU as the parliament is.

It's disingenuous to say that this is not the EU, of course it's also disingenuous to say that the EU is a monolith who wants this at all levels, but two wrongs don't make a right

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