[mhitza]

Per the article

> At the same time, we are still far from the end of the legislative process. This means that we must stay alert to how the other two law-making institutions – the Council of EU Member States and the European Commission – respond

To be able to fight these ludicrous attempts at privacy, we must put a spotlight on those behind these proposals (lobbyists). Coincidence or not, it wasn't transparent, but at least some journalists investigated https://privatecitizen.press/episode/160/

[miohtama]

The engineers behind the scan laws

https://twitter.com/echo_pbreyer/status/1721558597769818496

Inc. people from Google. Deserve to called out.

The shady politics and the corruptive US software companies that pushed for this:

https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...

[matthewdgreen]

Your first link is a set of experts that the EU Commission consulted while developing their regulations. It does not mean those folks were necessarily "behind" the regulations, so I would not call out anyone on that list.

Some of the folks on that list are certainly pro-scanning: it's an absurdly biased list. But to me that's reflective of the EU Commission having a desired policy from the start, then mainly seeking out experts who could help them achieve their goal.

[vlovich123]

I didn’t check all of the people but picked 2 names at random and they were policy people not engineers.

[raxxorraxor]

Also, while the most egregious part might be cancelled, these type of bills often still bring along their slightly less bad, but still fairly ugly brothers.

So private message scanning is off the table, we now just save meta data and build a communication graph for every citizen for the last 10 years.

No idea if this bill includes such laws, but that is usually the strategy to get people distracted.

[jstarfish]

It's the sucker-punch of legal maneuvers.

[Angostura]

The Parliament is very much the junior member compared with the Council and Commission

[toyg]

It still has ultimate veto powers.

[Angostura]

I've been unable to find an instance of the European Parliament vetoing legislation

[toyg]

Plenty. Some recent examples:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/european-parliament-scr...

https://agenceurope.eu/en/bulletin/article/13274/20

https://www.thejournal.ie/emissions-trade-system-fit-for-55-...

(Somewhat unsurprisingly, being currently dominated by right-wing parties, it happens often on "green" legislation...)

It doesn't happen every day simply because 1) MEPs typically don't want to be seen as "Mr. No", and 2) plenary votes are the end of a long legislative process, involving several steps; the Commission will typically not bring legislation to the floor if it understands, in previous committees, that it will likely be voted down.

The process is roughly this: EU Council (i.e. national governments) agree that "we should really do something about X"; the Commission drafts legislation to that effect, and brings it to Parliamentary committees; MEPs provide feedback and instructions on how to change things; Commission decides if the changes are acceptable, and if not they go back to Council asking "is this still ok if we do it in XY way?"; and back and forth they go, until the Commission decides to either withdraw it or put it to a plenary vote (in which case it's typically in a shape acceptable to Parliament, because nobody likes losing).

[Angostura]

But if you look at the first case, for example that was a rejection a first reading - not a definitive killing off.

It's not quite clear what happens next - the Council of ministers may apparently decide to continue working on the legislation regardless of the Parliament's vote.

In other words - it is not evidence of an "ultimate veto power"

[toyg]

Council and Commission can work on whatever they want - if it's not ultimately approved by an EP plenary, it's not a Directive. Occasionally some governments will go ahead and introduce laws that they tried and failed to go past the EP, but that's just national politics in action.

[tormeh]

They can continue to work on it, but without the parliament's approval it cannot become law.

[soco]

The entire irony of this is that all rightwingers are winning local elections by blaming the EU for wokeism, while they do have majority in all the EU organizations so whatever gets through against their tastes it's only through their own failures. But who cares about the truth, if the truth doesn't get you votes at home. It's just so disappointing that the regular Joe Voter, even though very loud about "doing their own research", never actually DO their own research, just swallow whatever they're told in their bubble.

[agent327]

Here's an overview of the political composition of the European Parliament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament#Elections

How do you reckon it is "dominated by right-wing parties"? Those parties make up about 20% of the parliament, whereas left-wing parties make up some 35% (with the rest being centrists and 'other').

[jltsiren]

You have a weird definition of left and right.

If you think that Social democrats (S&D; center-left) are "left", then Christian democrats and conservatives (EPP; center-right) are "right". Those two are the traditional mainstream left-wing and right-wing groups in Europe. With these, we have 141 seats for the left and 178 seats for the right.

Then we have more radical parties with a clear position on the left-right axis. The inconveniently named The Left in the European Parliament have 37 seats, while their right-wing counterparts are ECR (66 seats) and ID (60 seats). This brings the total to 178 seats for the left and 304 seats for the right.

There are also two centrist-groups: Greens/EFA (72 seats) and ALDE (102 seats). The former is a weird amalgamation of greens, regional parties, independents, and pirates ranging from left to center. The latter consists of center to center-right parties that usually have some connection to the liberal tradition. But in some cases, the party in ALDE is more conservative and less liberal than their national counterpart in EPP. If we include these centrist groups in the calculations, the balance shifts further to the right.

Finally there are 49 MEPs outside the major parties, bringing the total to 705.

[orwin]

EPP is a right-wing party. Its basically a mix of christian democrats (basically catholics), conservative (Les Republicains, amny others) and some liberals-conservatives (pro free-trade, anti union, pro-immigration if it makes labor cheaper, but also really conservative on according right to those migrants). It is also pro EU, in a weird way (Forza Italia is a member).

ALDE-PACE is basically Emmanuel Macron's party, so more socially liberal, and by that i mean he does accept that gay people do exist and can do whatever they want, if they want (the bar is low). They also are very pro-immigration in sectors that boost economies, but accept that immigrant workers can have equal rights. Extremely pro-Europe. I'd call them right-wing, but to be fair, only its leader is, most party members are pretty much center, center-right (they would be liberal-democrat in the US), and they push a lot of the legislation the greens want to pass, for multiple reasons (the green are seen as an "acceptable compromise", citing an EPP member i ate with).

I would not call the current Green left-wing either, its a torn party. I guess after the Covid and last summer, the wars and the resulting immigration, a lot of young people joined, and politically active young people are more left-wing, but the leaders are more center, center-left. But they hold major power on the left and can work with the other center party, and sometimes even the EPP. They are also on point (and have/propose good formations) with privacy and civil liberties, which might seems left-wing if you're in the US, but to me it's basically to political proposition of the old french party "les radicaux" which was so much in the center they split in two 30 years ago).

[toyg]

I guess your definition of "right-wing" is a bit different from mine. "Centrists" in post-WW2 Europe are largely conservative: fundamentally religious, pro-business, anti-immigration. That, to me, is right-wing - respectable, not touting nazi tattoos (mostly), but still fundamentally reactionary in nature. Those blocs are usually allied with "liberal" parties, a term which in Europe carries right-wing connotations because "liberalism" is meant in the original economic sense: free-trade, unbridled capitalism, etc. Occasionally they ally even with ultra-right parties, which often include real neofascist / neonazis.

If you consider them like that, traditionally-conservative parties account for over 65% of current MEPs.

[uxp8u61q]

"Centrists" are right wing in European politics.

[zajio1am]

Once i read an analysis comparing EP legislative action to action of national parliaments and it said that EP has much higher rate of rejecting legislation.

It makes sense - in parliamentary democracy, the coalition in government has majority in parliament and government members are often party leaders (or other important people in parties), so legislature could be pushed through parliament by party lines.

In EP there is much weaker connection between government (EU Commission) and EP, which makes EP more independent.

[xvector]

Finally, some good name and shame. I hope someone well-funded exposes these people for who they are and turns public opinion against them en masse.