[bb101]

I think many people in the UK admire the Swiss and Norwegian models of participating in the "European project". The country retains sovereignty and only implements laws that suit its citizens.

I have to say I am surprised by your comment, as it assumes that politicians are responsible for their country's perspective on Europe? Surely it is the other way round, and the politicians have an obligation to represent their citizens' viewpoints fairly and transparently - regardless of whether it is seen as palatable by the bureaucrats. It does seem that some EU politicians (read: Merkel) are only discovering this right now.

[throwaway7767]

> I think many people in the UK admire the Swiss and Norwegian models of participating in the "European project". The country retains sovereignty and only implements laws that suit its citizens.

Since they participate in the EEA, they don't really have a choice to say no to the EEA legislation. They are required to implement similar legislation within a certain time period, otherwise the EEA will sue the government for not fulfilling their contract. About the only way to really say "no" to something is to rescind their EEA membership.

Case in point: data retention was forced through in Iceland through the EEA agreement. This unpopular legislation went through because "it's an EEA requirement, you don't want to leave the single market do you?". After it was implemented, the directive was struck down by the EU court, so it's no longer required for EEA area countries to implement. But Iceland is still stuck with the data retention laws, and they're unlikely to go anywhere as revoking laws is much, much harder than passing them.

[vog]

> Case in point: data retention was forced through in Iceland through the EEA agreement

That's only half of the story.

Many other European countries were in the same situation as Iceland, but didn't hurry to implement their data retention. Instead they decided to wait for the EU court ruling.

Also, that lawsuit came to no surprise. I bet the activists would have loved to start the lawsuit even earlier, but you can't start a lawsuit against something that doesn't exist yet.

[vog]

> I have to say I am surprised by your comment, as it assumes that politicians are responsible for their country's perspective on Europe?

They are responsible for the country's actions towards other countries. To make it more clear: I deeply hope that they are not really backed by the population, and that they will either notice that on their own, or that the next elections which show a shift towards "working together" instead of "against each other" in Europe.

We can't solve all issues in Europe if every country optimized only for themselves, ignoring their neighbours.

> the politicians have an obligation to represent their citizens' viewpoints fairly and transparently

Note that there are also European politicians (the European parliament), which are elected as well and serve their citizens' viewpoints as well. Interestingly, those manage to find better solutions, thinking about all Europeans despite representing just a subset of them. Unfortunately, the European parliament has not much power in the overall EU process, which is another real pity.

> It does seem that some EU politicians (read: Merkel) are only discovering this right now.

Our German politicians have (and always had) a disproportionally large influence in Europe. So there was never a need for Germany to distance from Europe. However, this also led to suboptimal solutions in the past, to say the least. But to me, this is not a sign that the "European project" doesn't work. For me, it shows that we aren't consequent enough. The member governments (read: European commission) have too much influence and the European parliament (which is the only instance that equally represents all European citizens) doesn't have enough influence.

[icebraining]

In the line of the anarchist saying "if voting changed anything, it would be made illegal", maybe the only reason why the EP has a good number of such broad-minded people is because the institution doesn't have much power.