[mrtksn]

I enjoyed the title more that I want to admit TBH :)

In every country in Europe people are pissed with their government and hate the police but when its a "Euro" thing it feels much better.

The online narrative may make you think that "Europe" is a dirty word(chat control, cookie banner, regulations, fines etc), but its actually much more pure than any local politics and much much less divisive. The "Euro cops" phrase gives me the feeling of bunch of police officers that are not particularly fun at parties but are definitely not corrupt.

[oliwarner]

This reminded me of something Jean-Claude Juncker once said about democracy in the EU:

> We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it.

Being a step removed from local politics means they can do stuff without the immediate fear they're all kicked out, but the other downside of people not really caring who they elect is it's relatively easy to be elected on a "We hate the EU" line. It's a weird place.

[jll29]

I love the EU.

There just isn't a better place to live (having lived in other places like the UK, US and CH, and visited many countries).

For example, when I meet European researchers, each has some things to bitch about their own governments, but we all agree the unity of the EU is very valuable, and that we are very grateful for what it has given us (democratic stability, freedom of movement, a vision for living together respecting and celebrating our cultural differences yet sharing key values).

In the media, in particularly in the UK, people had not much good to say about the "European beaurocrats". In contrast, I work with some very committed officers in Brussels that administer the Horizon Europe research programme, and they are doing a job as well as possible given legal and political constraints. How they work is too little known by the general public, which makes the EU bashing easy but not quite fair.

[mrtksn]

Hi stumble on this tweet about EUs Horizon program and the person who wrote it looks very frustrated: https://x.com/ewasniecinska/status/1982130441088794788

Can you maybe give some context on the issues he's talking about?

[swores]

Be careful not to take it too much for granted (I'm not saying you are) - plenty of us in the UK felt how you feel, too! Just not quite enough of us, sadly.

[6510]

It was priceless when Farage explained this was just a campaign slogan.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/x0vicd/v...

It was intended as just an example of what one could do with all that delicious tax money.

[immibis]

The stuff they did in this particular case is likely a violation of all laws involved, just like the other recent case with the US Secret Service in New York City. In both cases they are seizing someone's business equipment, on the assumption that because it is an unusual business and sometimes it is used for spam, the business itself is spam.

Actually, it's probably legal in the USA, but completely illegal in the EU where the Digital Services Act regulation very specifically says that a mere conduit of data transmissions cannot be held liable for data transmissions passing through it which it didn't originate. I only know anything about the law in Germany (and I am not a lawyer) so let's pretend this happened in Germany - then the business operator - presuming that they're running a relay business and not spammers themselves - would win back all the money this police action deprived them of, including lost revenue, equipment costs, lawyer fees, and repairs for any damages incurred during the raid. Their cellphone provider is probably allowed to terminate their contract however, and could sue them if they had any meaningful damages. The civil court system here is very algorithmic as far as I'm aware: if(you broke the law) you.transfer(victim, victim.money_if_you_hadnt_broken_the_law - victim.money);

[heresie-dabord]

> We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it.

Modern US variant: we will say whatever we must to amass donations to pay for the election campaign, but you'd be a fool to bet on our doing what we should once elected.

[SoftTalker]

And yet the gripe I hear a lot about people in the US who voted for the current admin is that "they are doing what they said they would do."

[constantius]

The EU has its advantages, but I'd never list "more pure" and "not corrupt" among them. The EU introduced lobbying (=legal corruption) into European politics when most countries historically didn't have much of it. It also has a massive amount of normal, God-fearing illegal corruption.

Many of the biggest stories about the EU are about or have a sizable aspect of corruption. Chat Control amd Thorn, Ursula von der Leyen and Big Pharma, Ursula von der Leyen and $anything.

Follow the Money is a thriving investigative journalism publication that lives off uncovering corruption in the EU.

https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-ho...

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

https://www.ftm.eu/

[mrtksn]

On the contrary, EU is notoriously hard for the rich to lobby. It is also the primary motivation behind the super rich to be against EU since they too are having trouble to find someone in EU to solve their "problems". A famous anecdote is from Rupert Murdock who is able to influence UK poltics at whim but had no effect on EU: https://www.quora.com/When-I-go-into-Downing-Street-they-do-...

He was also a huge backer of Brexit.

On social media there's persistent and years long push to paint EU as anti-Business. They are pushing and pushing for de-regulations.

The Pfizergate is another great example of what happens when you have a centralized decision. That scandal only exist because of the Covid, an unprecedented situation where EU has to take quick actions and had to engage with companies directly. The scope of the scandal is also extremely benign compared to what you have in other places, it's essentially a transparency scandal. No one is even seriously accusing her of abuse of her position for personal enrichment when in a normal country this type of scandal is often about giving the contract to a relative of theirs or an election campaign donor.

Once the Ukraine war is over, I also expect to see other scandals to be unearthed as they were rushed to acquire weapons fast.

There are scandals like Qatar paying an MPs to push their agenda, but other than that EU is so much less corrupt than anything the local governments have. Those involved in the Qatar scandal went to prison, how many local politicians you have who go to prison for anything other than political reasons?

Have you noticed what has been happening in US since February for example? That one is extreme but all over EU the local governments have some sort of these scams and dealings. In countries like US all you have to do is to buy president's crypto coins or make a donation for his election campaigns. In EU, you simply can't do anything of this sort. That's why those who want influence actually pay social media influencers to push an agenda and this is considerably more expensive and hard compared to just establishing a relationship and paying up the president.

Many of EU's weaknesses are also it's strength since having full control and being able to move fast comes with its risks.

That's why across the EU the trust in EU and support for EU is way higher than any local governments. The worst is over %50 in favor of EU, when most of the governments consider themselves lucky if they are in the %30s.

[constantius]

We seem to be exposed to different information on the EU.

> notorious for rich people to lobby

I don't know about rich people, but companies seem to have a lot of success in doing so.

> Murdoch backer of Brexit

This is not evidence that the EU is hard to lobby. People across the political spectrum can be anti-EU: Corbyn, who's as left and as anti-corruption as they come, was a Leaver (and a UK with Corbyn as PM would have arguably been better off outside the EU, but I digress).

> Ursula, scandal only about transparency and not personal enrichment

I don't know how awarding billions of public funds in contracts and then deleting all messages, something she's done before while working for the German gov, is "not that bad" and not about personal enrichment, but about her great care for efficiency and the European pop...

> Those involved in the Qatar scandal went to prison, how many local politicians you have who go to prison for anything other than political reasons?

You're cherry-picking, powerful EU officials are as immune to justice as anywhere else, and plenty of examples exist in Member States of people going to prison for corruption. The former president of France just started his prison sentence, you might have heard. Those cases are the exceptions that prove the rule.

> Have you noticed what has been happening in US since February for example?

Few countries would look good on corruption if you compare them to "What has been happening in the US", FULL STOP. That the EU is not as far gone as the US has been for decades (thank fuck) is, again, no evidence of anything.

I invite you to peruse ftm.eu, as I'm on my phone: look at the criticism of OLAF's selective investigations, the watchdogs lacking any independence and finding that everything's just dandy with EU officials, the revolving doors across so many industries, the bribes and gifts, the insider trading, employment of family members, mismanagement of funds, etc. etc. etc.

One article that I enjoyed is this:

https://archive.is/YieBg

Edited to address more of your points.

[mrtksn]

> One article that I enjoyed is this: https://archive.is/YieBg

The corruption in EU is indeed happening through local governments(EU allocates money for projects, local governments who actually end up getting the money to execute these projects siphon that to their cronies or to spice up the local economies), as per this article and the articles in ftm.eu

[constantius]

> as per this article

This is one article that says the European Commission is not aware of 90% of EU fraud cases: at this scale, this can't be brushed off as being the fault of member states.

> and the articles in ftm.eu

No. That is not what FTM investigations show. At all.

[mrtksn]

The site is paywalled, can't check the articles but at least one of the headlines is about the local government corruption(how Orban funnels Hungary's assets to its allies).

Since EU doesn't directly deal with anything, there's not much opportunity for corruption. It's almost always down the pipeline.

[thesmtsolver]

> A famous anecdote is from Rupert Murdock who is able to influence UK poltics at whim but had no effect on EU:

Is it though?

> There is much fake news published about me, but let me make clear that I have never uttered those words

https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/nationals/rupert-murdo...

I buy the rest of your comment that EU may be better than local govts.

[mrtksn]

People deny things all the time. He used his media in favor of UK leaving EU, which is more consistent with him not being happy with his abilities to influence EU.

[hulitu]

> EU is notoriously hard for the rich to lobby.

Yes, the rich are lobbying the EU hard. /s

[junaru]

> In every country in Europe people are pissed with their government and hate the police

Objectively false [1]. Europe is pissed at government (~30% approval) and love the police (70% approval). Hating on police is an US thing exclusively.

1: https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/nl/dataset/80518ned/table

[mrtksn]

Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit the European's attitudes towards their local police and governments(some small and cold countries tend to trust their local police and government more than the larger countries at sunny places) but here you can see that EU is consistency viewed more favorably than the local ones through the years:

https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3372

[lillecarl]

Maybe edit and clarify your misinformation that Europeans hate the police? We don't.

[mrtksn]

The trust levels in Police is much lower in larger countries. In Germany it’s %50 and %35. NL is not the rule, it’s the exception.

But sure, hating the police is an exaggeration. Still, I think it’s obvious that its for illustrative purposes and not a declaration. Just like everybody never means every single person no exceptions when talking about general situations. It’s like when you say “everyone knows that the flat earth theory is BS”. Yes it’s not everybody and your mileage may vary depending on the location.

[anonzzzies]

> In every country in Europe people are pissed with their government and hate the police

those exist, never met any luckily, guess I hang in positive circles.

[heresie-dabord]

> when its a "Euro" thing it feels much better.

A sense of unity builds optimism, especially in very troubled times.