[sackfield]

This pops up every few years, and I bet once it gets in it never goes away. It seems asymmetric that one side only has to win once to win permanently while the other side has to win constantly. Is there any mechanism to stop this in the EU and make this kind of legislation explicitly barred?

[zackmorris]

This is the same problem in the US. Legislation (that protects the environment, minorities, the ability to compete in the market, etc) that took years, even decades to get signed into law, is getting repealed today by the current administration via executive order or simple majority vote. Because sabotage is much easier than building something.

Unfortunately the only answer that I know of is eternal vigilance, which is the price of liberty.

I decided to look up who that saying is attributed to, and apparently it's John Philpot Curran, not Thomas Jefferson. But I like Orwell's saying better, because it shows why all of you are just as ineffectual at steering government policy as I am:

https://www.socratic-method.com/quote-meanings-and-interpret...

[piaste]

I'm sure you just linked the first google result you found, and it's not like the internet wasn't full of crappy 'quote' websites in the halcyon days of 2021, but it's incredibly depressing to click that link and get drowned in paragraphs of worthless AI blathering.

After a quick search - and ignoring Google's helpful clanker who tries to point you to the _wrong_ Orwell text - it's not hard to find a clean source:

https://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/RoadToW...

[jimmydddd]

It's amazing how much is done by executive order these days. Which means it can be instantly undone when the other party comes into office. And I assume that once an executive order is made, then the party has no interest in trying to have congress vote in a bill locking in the same issue.

[azmodeus]

Vote them out and never vote for their parties in your general elections

If your Member of European Parliament supports chat control stop voting for their parties and politically support their opposition

[kurthr]

Vote for an opposition which promises mass deportations? Certainly, they will never go back on their word to create a surveillance state?!? Asking your politicians to lie to you is not a substitute for changing their incentives.

The key point to make is that once you're spying on your own people, you've created the single weakest point of entry for your geopolitical opponents spying on you and manipulating the population as well. It's such a dumb political move, it seems like it could only come from extreme fear, greed, or manipulation. Switch it around and make them afraid of the alternative.

[Levitz]

>Vote for an opposition which promises mass deportations? Certainly, they will never go back on their word to create a surveillance state?!?

Not quite a fan of deportations, but I'd rather risk people going back on their word than the alternative here.

I wholeheartedly refuse to vote for anyone who publicly supports this. It is integral to democracy itself. If my only alternative is "The party of kicking kittens and opposing chatcontrol" I will 100% support them.

[debugnik]

Kicking kittens makes it sound simpler of a choice than it really is, because you're not a kitten and you could protect yours. Would you vote for "the party of beating people like Levitz and opposing chat control"?

[Levitz]

I'd probably start playing with the idea of leaving the country and advise people I know to do the same, at that point the country is not a democracy anymore either way. Hopefully I don't have to point out how there's a massive difference between that and considering mass deportations.

[gotoeleven]

The surveillance state in europe is being created to make it illegal to oppose mass immigration policies, because apparently the powers that be have realized that not enough people like mass immigration so it needs to be forced down everyone's throat with a combination of censorship, surveillance and party-banning. From your comment, it seems like you support mass immigration policies but also do not support censorship and surveillance (maybe only for practical reasons because it might eventually be used against things you like?). The question for you is: what if you couldn't choose? What if you could only have both or neither? Because that's whats on offer.

[okucu]

Can only speak for Germany and the mass deportations here are done by liberals. They also let 40k+ people drown in the Mediterranean, support literally every single war, support multiple genocides and export weapons to all dictatorships known to man. At this point I'm not sure the actual Nazis would be worse than liberals.

Also very weird how whenever "liberals/centrists" are in power the (ultra) right gain lots of momentum. Must be the weather

Almost forgot: we're also in our third year of recession and the only investments are made in the military industry to prep for starting the next world war

[FinnKuhn]

I don't want to get too political, but calling the CDU/CSU liberal is pretty misleading in this context considering that they are part of the EVP (conservative) on a European level and not Renew Europe (liberal).

[okucu]

What has anything I said to do with the European parliament? I'm talking about the same parties in general. Greens are even further right than cdu/csu who have the same policies in 99% of cases as libs

>I don't want to get too political

Do you practice self censorship like the German media?

[FinnKuhn]

> What has anything I said to do with the European parliament?

This whole thread is about EU politics.

> Greens are even further right than cdu/csu who have the same policies in 99% of cases as libs

Trying to paint the greens as further right than CDU/CSU is just plain wrong by any measure. The greens are a green/social liberal party while the CDU/CSU are conservative center-right party. None of their politicians would ever argue that they are more left than the greens which is pretty obvious when looking at a quote from Friedrich Merz (German chancellor and party leader of the CDU/CSU) where he quite literally says that the greens are more left. [1]

[1] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/merz-gruene-10... English: "In the coming weeks and months, we will once again significantly intensify the debate with the Greens and, above all, counter the impression that we are always looking to the left and saying that we absolutely must form a coalition with them at some point."

[gotoeleven]

What "mass" deportations in germany are you talking about? I can only find any news references to two flights, totaling ~100 people in the past year. Surely even a normal level of deportations, let alone "mass" deportations, would generate more deportations than this?

And you're really not sure this is less draconian than nazis?

[namibj]

Normal deportations get booked on commercial flights, not herded onto charters.

[gotoeleven]

https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/64755/germany-over-6000...

The vast majority of these deportations are just shuffling people around the EU in what seems like a game of hot potato over who is supposed to be responsible for a given migrant. Deportations that actually get people out of the EU seem to be extremely rare afaict.

[okucu]

20k people were deported in 2024. That's not insignificant.

Anyway, let's assume germany deported 0 people. It's telling that you're focusing in typical liberal manner on a single issue and disregarding everything else (war, genocide, recession, submission to usa as a vassal state etc.)

[raxxorraxor]

Every member (aside 2 crazy people I believe) of the European Parliament voted for age verification and more user surveillance. It isn't salvageable.

Maybe it is a result of sending the biggest idiots off to the EU when they failed in national politics, but the problem remains.

[wqaatwt]

Problem is that very few “normal” people are even aware of this. Very few people particularly interested about most policies on the EU level. So they pretty much have free reign to do anything with minimal repercussions.

For better or for worse the EU itself is about as much of a democracy as some of the European empires were back in the in early 1900s with their sham parliaments which had very little real power.

[progbits]

Not good enough. They can get in again next election.

[t0bia_s]

You still belive that vote solve anything? Divide and conquer is strong indeed. We should focus to abandoning giving our responsibility to unknown electorate.

[vaylian]

I agree. But also: I've been doing that for a long time already. The problem is that these surveillance laws don't get enough attention by the general public until they come into effect. For example: The UK's online safety act.

[izacus]

So make general public aware of them. Campaign. Inform. That's how democracies work. Don't expect others do to the legwork for your pet case.

[Y_Y]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification_of_the_Treaty_of_...

Like when the Irish electorate rejected the Lisbon Treaty, and then was then harangued into accepting a reheated version. Opponents of the treaty reasonably asked if it could be best-of-three.

[sunshine-o]

The Dutch and French also massively rejected the first version of this in 2005. Strangely they didn't bothered to ask the citizens the second time.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Dutch_European_Constituti...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constitut...

[extraduder_ire]

Calling what would become the Lisbon treaty a "constitution" was always going to be a losing proposal.

[messe]

> and then was then harangued into accepting a reheated version

After receiving concessions.

[rusk]

Importantly around neutrality which was most people’s issue anyway.

The real problem was that the referendum commission (the state body in charge of informing the public on these matters) was deemed “too neutral” and was forever after hobbled and since then we have had to vote in a veritable information vacuum.

[munksbeer]

I'm failing to understand the problem here. The Irish rejected the proposed treaty, the took that rejection and the reasons, went back to rework it, and asked if the next version was suitable, and it was.

That sounds exactly like you'd expect it to work, and yet people seem outraged by it.

Why?

[raxxorraxor]

For me it is a sign the the EU construction does simply not work. It is an undemocratic technocracy that is easily lobbied by players pushing for this and I don't feel represented by a parliament where I don't know anyone.

They circumvent the accountability of nation states, it is a development catastrophe since people cannot have a reasonable influence on policies anymore.

[munksbeer]

Nation states are the ones asking for stuff like this. The EU commission focuses on objectives set by the heads of the nation states. The elected EU parliament then votes on the proposals.

The bad thing about the EU is that it opens up views like yours, trying to absolve your own nation of any culpability, when that is just not true.

If you don't like the direction of the EU, vote in a government and MEPs who will steer it in a different direction. If enough people do this, then the EU changes, as happens in every democracy.

What you're seeing is simply democracy in action. You think these things are going against the majority, but the reality is, the majority of citizens are ok for this to happen at the nation state level, and by extension at the EU level.

Stop blaming the EU. It is lazy and makes the problem worse. Look closer to home.

[raxxorraxor]

No, the institutions of the EU allow nation states to push through unpopular legislation, for which they could be held accountable on a national level. At least to a larger degree.

So in this case it is the fault of the EU as well because its structures allow this to happen.

I prefer battling one national government instead of 27.

The EU certainly isn't democracy in action, on the contrary it is highly technocratic. Without the promised proficiency though.

[munksbeer]

You're making the mistake that populations don't want this, when it is largely in the realm of HN or reddit or wherever else nerds hang out. Population polls have repeatedly shown that people want age verification checks and are ok with message scanning "to save the children". Lot's of people are ignorant of the stupidity of this stuff, but that is democracy for you.

You're blaming the EU for something that is the fault of our populations, voting in governments who increasingly push these agendas. You're not helping anything by doing that.

[raxxorraxor]

No, the population is completely in the dark about it because there is no media reporting on it. A real European media doesn't exist. Only people in tech aligned circles even know about these topics at all.

There are no real polls. Any positive poll asks about protecting kids in a populist way or it is framed as something combatting big tech, which is just as dishonest.

But the real numbers will be in if people don't submit any photos or IDs for some flimsy age verification.

Be that as it may, there are also constitutional protection against surveillance, regardless of popular support, which I argue doesn't exist.

[AlecSchueler]

But it works the same at the level of national governments. What's the difference?

[raxxorraxor]

No, national governments are closer to the voting population and can be held accountable more effectively. That just isn't possible for EU institutions, parliament or not. The level of indirection matters.

[AlecSchueler]

And would you be in favour of dissolving the national governments in favour of devolving power to even more local governments that are closer to their populations and even held even more effectively accountable? What's the ideal level of "indirection?"

Where do you draw the line/how do you strike balance? And I'm curious if you have an idea of an alternative for the regular coordination efforts that would be needed for the national/sub national governments in the absence of something like the EU.

[raxxorraxor]

The EU theoretically defines the goal itself in its statutes about subsidiarity.

Your argument doesn't make sense, you cannot just use abstraction to justify building new layers of governance.

I could give you an arbitrary line and say a common language would be the point. It is sensible as well because nobody in the Netherlands knows any politician from Spain and vice versa. On a national level this is not as pronounced.

I don't need coordination efforts about scanning encrypted messages if that is your question.

[dylan604]

It's funny to me that in the cops vs robbers scenario, it is the bad guys that have to be perfect to avoid getting caught while the good guys only have to get lucky once to catch the bad guys.

Your use of this then would translate to the governments wanting to read all the mail to constantly stay informed would be the bad guys where the other actors only have to get lucky once by having a mission complete would be the good guys?

[chii]

that analogy is drawing similarities when there is none. The "bad" guys in the cops vs robbers scenario is one where the bad guys have already done something worthy of needing to be caught.

[saltcured]

Metaphors matter, but often bias us.

Cops vs robbers? Christians vs lions in Rome?

Or, we're merely fish in a barrel and trying to convince ourselves we have any control over whether we get shot?

[AlecSchueler]

No, it couldn't be done without amending the treaties. Currently each Commission has to govern with the same powers as their predecessors so there's no mechanism for them to bind the power of those who come after them.

[nickslaughter02]

The legislation would have to be proposed by the very same people who are pushing for this. It's not going to happen.

[ThrowawayTestr]

Any kind of legislation to prevent it can be legislated away.

[ccorcos]

Sounds like you need a constitution.

[nradov]

Leave the EU.