And be told to sod off.
From Wikipedia: [0]-"Currently, there is one member per member state, but members are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state."
How difficult is it to run? How much money do you need? What are the barriers to success? Is it set up so that only the already rich and powerful can run and win (and therefore they are just pushing their own interests), and if not do you need considerable financial support (and therefore are beholden to the already rich and powerful who funded your campaign)?
It is much easier to break into EU than the local governments, since EU has so much less power, so you have more weird people there.
And citizens don't vote for the Commission directly, meaning there's a lot of backroom dealing in its selection.
[1] Which also covers, I think, the act of repealing prior legislation.
Obviously I'm not expecting that my actions alone are enough to get the outcome I want, but it's difficult not to feel the bite of "if voting changed anything, they would make it illegal." It's just going to be some other paid-for dickface in corporate pockets, every time.
There should't be a discussion at all.
This law proposal is explicitly against the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the allegedly institutions that are supposed to upheld the charter are CJEU, European Commission, FRA, NHRIs, where are they?
That will take time, though, so I guess they are either hoping that some impossibly secure, reliable and unerring technologies emerge in the meantime, or they are prepared for a forever battle with the Court, coming up with ever new adjustments as soon as previous schemes get struck down[1], meanwhile allowing European law enforcement agencies to keep testing, developing and iterating on whatever client-side scanning or other techno-legal approaches they may come up with. I think this was roughly what they — ie, basically a group of a dozen or two law enforcement reps from different member states agencies and ministries along with like one lonely independent information security expert — said themselves in some working group report as part of some kind of Commission roadmap thing presented by von der Leyen not too long ago.
[1] On the data protection side we've already seen this kind of perpetual movement through the years with respect to different “safeguarding” mechanisms made available to enable transfers of personal data to the US without too much hassle, from Safe Harbor through Privacy Shield to the current Data Privacy Framework.
Both the right to privacy and the right to protection of personal data have exemptions for government. The right to private communications was modified by the ECHR to give an exemption for prevention of crime/protection of morals/etc.[1] and the right to protection of personal data exempts any legitimate basis laid down by law[2].
[1] https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/7-respect-privat...
[2] https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/8-protection-per...
They themselves even wrote it in the proposal - "Whilst different in nature and generally speaking less intrusive, the newly created power to issue removal orders in respect of known child sexual abuse material certainly also affects fundamental rights, most notably those of the users concerned relating to freedom of expression and information."
This proposal is de facto a mass communication surveillance of EU citizens.
Exactly as you mentioned every single member state and EU have laws that can for example issues a court order and seize your communication devices if you are braking a law for an investigation, there is no need for EU to have a law that first goes against the very essence of EU, second it also brakes I am pretty sure every single constitution of each different member states.
If this law passes you live in a totalitarian state and there is no excuse for that.
But at least when it comes to Chat Control, it is not EU level, it's member states pushing for it and at least for now EU blocking it, so at least for once it is a good thing and the minority of ~8 states can still block it for the majority, block it for all 27 states..
but not for chat control but another things, they have going much worse
There were similar problems in areas other than privacy and encryption, or indeed technology.
UK's one is easily avoided.
But reality is that NONE of those options should be even considered.
Exactly. There is a reason why more and more EU-skeptical movements gain traction in various EU countries.
Europeans in general like or is indifferent towards the EU.
My observations are different.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1360333/euroscepticism-e...
The "positive" number has recovered from a low in the wake of the Eurozone crisis but is still fallen significantly from the pre-crisis level of around 50%.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown by country - The EU's own report suggests very big variations between countries: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/905...
Also, negative and positive feelings are not the same thing as a vote. For example, some people who felt negative about the EU voted remain because they were worried about economic disruption (the government was predicting a severe recession in the event of a leave vote - not after leaving, merely as a result of a vote). I am sure people can think of other examples and both ways, but the point is that "feel negative/positive" and "would vote to leave/remain) are not the same number).
Sure, the eurozone debt crisis of the 2010s was rough for the trust mumbers, taking them down to 33% but they've fully recovered from that.
it seems to be using a different measure (numbers do not match the link I posted) and I cannot see any numbers from 20 years ago.
There is graph from 2012 but that is from the low (if you look at my link).
Have a missed a pre-crisis comparable number in skimming it? If not, then what I see is still a significant decline over the last 20 years in the net positive.
IMO the Eurozone is very likely to have further crises. The architects of the Euro expected a greater degree of fiscal union but that never happened. A single currency without a large central budget is a mistake and makes it much harder to correct instability.
> A single currency without a large central budget is a mistake and makes it much harder to correct instability.
That's an opinion. You're free to have that opinion, but trust/distrust of the European Union has little to do with that opinion.
France held a referendum on the creation of the EU in 1992, and approved it.
You're thinking of the 2005 referendum, which was about the TCE. The EU already existed before that.
It's easy / tempting to extrapolate from our limited bubble / point of view, but it doesn't tell you anything about a population at large.
Can you explain how MEP's directly proposing laws would affect this? I really don't get it. In parliamentary systems it's normal that virtually all legislation originates in the executive. In the British parliament at least, that a law is privately proposed and then becomes law is rare and normally restricted to very simple legislation on specific issues.
The general process is a bit like this, simplified:
- the Council of heads of state appoints the Commission
- the Commission proposes laws
- the Parliament approves laws
- the Council of ministers implements them
- the Court blocks any unconstitutional laws
The problem has been for the longest time that the Commission appointments are not elected, somewhat mired in cronyism, and they keep proposing nonsense laws while the elected parliament can just stand there and vote no while not being able to suggest any legislation we actually need.
Please inform yourself or you're in danger of letting things happen through your ignorance. The commission is not pushing this. They're acting on instructions from a certain number of elected politicians.
And, you're misleading others when you post stuff like this.
None of us posting in these topics wants this proposal to pass. And in order to fight it, you've got to be correctly informed.
It's Not Who Votes That Counts, It's Who Counts The Votes
- J.Stalin- Mogens Jallberg
Regarding your Stalin "quote", please see https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stalin-vote-count-quote/ .