[wasmitnetzen]

The "EU" is not "greenlighting" that proposal this week. The Council of the EU will vote on their negotiation stance, which is merely one step in the legislative process, after which the Commission (which is pro-scanning) and the parliament (which is broadly against it) will get involved.

[bigfudge]

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.

[constantcrying]

>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.

[bux93]

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.

[constantcrying]

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.

[vidarh]

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.

[KajMagnus]

> 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

[bux93]

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.

[growse]

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

[arlort]

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

[Jensson]

And at every stage people will talk about how horrible EU is as if this has already passed, just like last time.

[constantcrying]

>And at every stage people will talk about how horrible EU is as if this has already passed, just like last time.

Even the idea makes me loose all faith in the institution. How can you be okay with people as deranged as this making rules about the future of your country?

"Not everyone is insane", just isn't a particularly strong point.

[nurple]

Could instead be like the US where citizens aren't even allowed to read parts of the spying laws that apply to them. The endgame being to surreptitiously bug every device and application with local scanning; changes in ToS that allow this invasion are helpfully conflated with the same language a corpo would use if they wanted to train models on your content.

[sunaookami]

The documents for chat control got leaked by the press. Nothing was released by the EU.

[t0bia_s]

Source?

[ffsm8]

When did the EU become a country though...?

[constantcrying]

How do EU rules not influence the countries which are member states?

[ffsm8]

I would certainly hope they do, it'd be entirely pointless if it didn't.

Doesn't change that it's not a country.

[DEADMINCE]

Practically, it may as well be.

Common military in practice, common currency, common laws, common courts and highest authority, common passport rules, etc.

[constantcrying]

But the rules the EU makes impact the country I live in.

The EU does not need to be a country for their rules to have impacts on countries. I think this is pretty self explanatory though?

[jiriknesl]

Can't EU be terrible, just because those ideas get this far?

[nolok]

The EU is terrible because ideas are discussed and put to a vote? That's one way to view things I guess

[sva_]

The fact that we have to deal with this bullshit every couple months is a pretty depressing fact on its own.

[elric]

I wish there was a way for EU citizens to punish the council this behaviour. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be anything in place for that.

[tmtvl]

There is: EU citizens can engage their peers in dialogue on how this behaviour is terrible and they can try their darnedest to convince their peers to never vote for politicians who are part of the problem.

[hcfman]

Yes that will work. Just like referendums work in the Netherlands for example. 90% the population vote in a referumdum against a particular agreement. The government voted for it anyway and then got rid of referendums.

That's how effective and democratic this all is.

[sva_]

Could you be more specific which case this was?

[t0bia_s]

I would prefer to have decentralised government. This centralised rules for millions doesn't work and eventually escalate badly.

Just because we give up our responsibility to electorate in hope that they solve our problems. How could they possibly do that for millions of individuals with different problems and needs?

[Maken]

You can vote for a different president/prime minister.

[elric]

Sure, I can vote people into office, and after their tenure they disappear. But I can't vote their incompetent arses out of offices or prevent them from ever getting elected again when they display blatant disregard for human rights.

[bratwurst3000]

Yeah my idea was people need a positiv or a negative vote. Honestly I would mostly vote negative also against a Candidate.

[aitchnyu]

What if people choose their governments over more pressing concerns than $SCARE_QUOTE_PHRASE to defeat $STRAWMAN?

[ekianjo]

thats about as indirect as it goes

[azmodeus]

Replace your national government during national elections.

[t0bia_s]

Your vote doesn't matter and most likely wont change anything.

Divide and conquer.

[mariusor]

There is: stop electing the people that make these decisions in positions that can land them in the EU Council.

[greatgib]

I wish that we had this possibility, but here in France the bad political parties have strong regulatory barriers to prevent independent and need comers to be candidate or have a chance to be president and sometimes parlement members...

[bratwurst3000]

Same here in Germany. Parties need at least 5% of the vote to get elected into Parlament. That’s 2-4 million votes every year straight into the trash

[t0bia_s]

Your vote alone doesn't change anything.

[mariusor]

Yet, you should still vote.

[rvnx]

Add on top of that bullshit, the new plastic caps that the EU imposed instead of doing a refundable deposit per [bottle/cap pair].

[rekoil]

I'm sorry, are you talking about the plastic caps that stay attached to plastic bottles so that they are more likely to be disposed of properly rather than end up in some marine (or other nature) environment?

I cannot believe you're comparing that (an effort designed to make recycling more effective, which is generally a good thing) to EU citizens entirely losing our access to privacy in the digital world.

[rvnx]

The same, it solves a marginal problem (people that throw away on the highway only the plastic caps, and somehow keep separate the bottle), in an absurd way that punishes all the nice users, again, just to solve a small % of very cases.

The guys who somehow enjoy throwing away plastic caps, will likely remove it anyway.

The same with the spying, all users will suffer, but those who want to work around it, will find a way.

The irony is that it makes driving more dangerous now, as you need two hands to drink from a water bottle.

[rekoil]

Punish is a strong word, it slightly inconveniences all "the nice users".

It's really not that big of a deal honestly, you unscrew the bottle, flip the cap up (it kinda locks like that and stays out of your way in one of the designs I've seen, in the other it's just attached and can easily be kept out of the way with a finger), then you drink, I fail to see how you suddenly need two hands as opposed to before...

[CalRobert]

I use these caps one-handed plenty...

[harperlee]

> it makes driving more dangerous now, as you need two hands to drink from a water bottle.

What? That is absurd, you don't need two hands just because the lid remains attached.

[ffgjgf1]

How exactly do bottle caps in the EU end up in marine environments? And if they do that should be pretty easy to fix.

These regulations won’t do anything to stop countries in Asia, Africa and other places from pumping their garbage into rivers and oceans…

To be fair I don’t really mind the bottle caps (unlike the plastic straw ban) but it hardly accomplishes anything beautiful allowing people in the EU to feel better about themselves because they are doing their part (which is possibly actually counterproductive).

[sunbum]

But they are, as it becomes easier to just produce one version the bottle caps attached to the bottle will spread to other countries[1]

[1]- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect

[rvnx]

The solution was an EU-wide plastic bottle deposit, this way, it pushes people to bring back intact bottles with their caps and get ~0.10 EUR back for each.

And if you are too lazy to bring it back or just a person who throws away stuff carelessly, someone else will do (big sorting centers as it's a big revenue-stream, the cleaners, the homelesses, some bored students, etc).

[hgancy]

Passing is one thing. They waste everyone's time by threatening to pass idiotic legislation every 6 months. But perhaps that is the goal so people do not investigate why the EU is getting poorer and all money goes into housing and healthcare.

[bigfudge]

The median EU citizen is not getting poorer relative to the median US citizen. Don't confuse growing income inequality with "national wealth".

[hartator]

GDP per capita of EU used to be higher than the US.

[mariusor]

And then poorer countries joined the EU. I'm not an economist but I think that's how it's supposed to work.

[rsynnott]

I'm not sure that's ever been true on PPP? It may have been on a nominal basis from time to time due to a weak dollar (1 EUR hit 1.60 USD or so during the financial crisis), but that's of limited interest for the average person.

[amarcheschi]

It is still possible to contact your EU permanent representative group via email. Op link in "what to do" section has a precompiled email which you can send to your permanent representation group.

As little as it may be, I sent it to the Italian representative group, to the team that oversees telecommunications

Edit if you're Italian you can find the email(s) here, scroll to trasporti e telecomunicazioni https://italiaue.esteri.it/it/chi-siamo/

[t0bia_s]

It shows one common email and website doesn't work for Czechia.

[arlort]

Technically the commission came first, after this vote it'll go to parliament and then if there's a need for mediation the commission will be involved together with parliament and council

[tdsone3]

Excuse my ignorance, updated the title. Seeing the discussion here, it did attract the wrong audience...