[arlort]

Because it doesn't, people are just embarrassingly ignorant of how the EU legislative process works so when a vote to give first approval to a text is cancelled before it takes place journalists and reddit all over pull out the mission accomplished banners and when a negotiating position is approved everyone has a surprised pikachu face

The "proposal" was made something like 3 years ago, the killing never happened and the passing, if it passes, will happen in at least one year from now because this will definitely take a long time to get through parliament and even longer to get through the trilogue.

The process is many things but quick it is not

[zelphirkalt]

This is of course a process, that does not lend itself to be democratic, because it is way longer than most people's attention span. People don't manage to remember things that happened in politics 4 years ago in their own country. Now they are required to follow up on dozens of shitty proposals, all probably illegal in their own country, and those don't even happen in their own country? That divides the number of people, who even start looking into this stuff by a factor of 1000 or so.

[mejutoco]

Is there a website that tracks these? That would be a nice divulgation process.

[rbehrends]

There is the Parliament's legislative train website [1]. However, it only tracks actual legislative steps, not the intra-Council negotiations, so the proposal's page appears to be have been largely inactive since 2024 [2].

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/

[2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-a-new...

[GeoAtreides]

what do you mean, a slow bureaucracy is a democratic bureaucracy. the last thing you want is a highly efficient bureaucracy enacting change quickly.

This message brought to you by the Bureau of Sabotage

[ekianjo]

There is nothing democratic about the process. It's all unelected politicians ruling for you

[GeoAtreides]

I was making a joke (and referencing a book); that being said, you're wrong, no unelected politicians are ruling for me or any other european citizen.

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

Which politicians ran on a platform of "we are going to spy on you"? I guess all of them do.

[wongarsu]

"unelected politicians" and "politicians that do things outside their campaign promises" are very different claims

[iso1631]

Which ones are unelected - the democratically elected heads of the member state governments? Or the democratically elected members of the EU parliament?

Or the commissioners that are appointed by the democratically elected heads of the member state governments?

[ekianjo]

> are appointed by the democratically elected heads

Appointed, so, not elected. Thanks for answering.

[iso1631]

Same way as the executive in the westminster system is appointed.

[surgical_fire]

I tried the same questions on multiple different threads, to multiple different imbeciles posting the same bullshit.

You will never get an answer from them. But we should keep asking it anyway.

I always wondered if they live on the EU and are genuinely too stupid to understand how the bloc their country joined works or, most likely, live outside of it and the idea of the EU as a political entity offends their sensibilities or heighten their anxiety.

[wnoise]

The commissioners?

[iso1631]

Take Magnus Brunner, responsible for Internal Affairs and Migration. The Austrian Government, headed by Karl Nehammer at the time I believe, provided him.

The head of the EU, who was nominated by the Austrian Government (and the other 26 governments) and elected by the MEPs in parliament (who were directly elected) decided on his portfolio.

Compare this to the US system, where the head of the US executive is elected by electors who themselves are directly elected. That head then appoints whoever they want.

If you were to make the US reflect the EU, you would have

1) Senate nominates the president (one vote per state)

2) Congress votes for the president

3) Senate provides the people to be secretaries

4) President selects from that list and chooses which person gets head of State, head of Treasury, etc

This would give more power to the states and less to the federal level, which itself is something many in the US want. Doesn't make it undemocratic.

[scrollaway]

People’s attention span has decreased to a matter of days now, if not hours. Have you seen how quickly front page news in the US is forgotten?

The democratic process needs a revamp but it shouldn’t be driven by the general populations attention span.

[ahsillyme]

I wouldn't be so sure of that assertion regarding attention span. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance granted, it's about opinion rather than capability but the same bias would explain such a reflexive judgment, and such a judgment will have negative consequences if it is false. (Consensus can be shaped, as can the perception of consensus be.)

[squigz]

People on average are really not that stupid and are absolutely capable of looking back a few years for context.

[zelphirkalt]

Tell me more about that, while here in Germany people again and again vote against their own interest (AfD, CDU, SPD, and all the other corrupt and inept politicians and parties) and the mainstream parties have not managed to improve our situation for some 4-5 election cycles. Tell me more about that, while looking at the US. I am quite sure many other countries can be added to this list.

[squigz]

It's easy to reach for the "people are stupid" argument.

It's harder to ask, "Why are people still voting for this despite it seemingly being against their interests"

But once you do start asking that question, you'll find "they're just stupid" isn't really the only answer. At least 1 other answer would be they're responding to politics of other parties failing them too.

Is it the most rational decision for those people? No, probably not, but ignoring their motivations and chalking it up to stupidity or whatnot is really not going to solve anything - and, in fact, is only going to push those people further into what they believe. You should consider whether that's what you want.

[zelphirkalt]

Depends on how you define "stupid". In many cases you could say "unaware" or "forgetful" instead of "stupid". And mind, I did not say "stupid". That's a word you threw into this.

As to why they still vote like they do:

(1) Because every 4 years the mainstream party promise to solve some problems, netting votes of the young, gullible, or inexperienced voters.

(2) Promise pension increase, netting votes of the ever increasing amount of old people, most who don't care about who or what comes after them.

(3) People are too busy, burned out, or lazy (we still have it too good here, it seems), and cannot be arsed to inform themselves before elections. We also have tons of people, who are truly learning-resistant, right out of school or "university".

(4) People think, that SPD, CDU, Greens, etc. are the only way to stop AfD.

I think we are not very high on the democratic-ability scale. Yes, we vote every 4 years, but it is more like collectively we don't really care enough to inform ourselves properly and just check a few boxes, because we want to tell ourselves, that at least we did vote and that we are fine democratic citizen.

And look, I myself am not frequently reading all parties' positions. And I myself inform myself more shortly before an election, rather than all the time. But I do have a feeling for corruption and I don't always forget scandals that happen, when the next engagement-optimized news headline comes in. I still remember Rezo's "Zerstoerung der CDU" video. I remember reading those abgeordnetenwatch newsletters about the lobby register. Or the foodwatch newsletters about Kloeckner and the Lebensmittelampel. That's why I will not vote for mainstream-promise-a-lot-but-no-delivery parties and retired people clubs. And what more I do, is to use the Wahlomat, and actually check which party's position aligns most with my own.

I don't do too much either, but most people do way less to inform themselves. They just check a box out of habit. Why they vote for CDU/SPD? Because that's what they always did. It's real friggin dumb.

[DangitBobby]

We clearly live in different worlds.

[squigz]

Maybe that says more about your biases than it does about the intelligence of 8 billion people though.

[DangitBobby]

I'm not sure what factual basis you have for your optimism. I have plenty for my pessimism about human nature and our ability to competently govern ourselves as well as our general moral fortitude. We've gotten this far because we've been playing life on easy mode with a ridiculously nurturing planet and practically unlimited energy available under the ground, but we aren't smart enough or forward thinking enough to take on the minor pain necessary to avoid the catastrophe we are lumbering towards. We are short-sighted, selfish, self-important, and we haven't earned the regard in which we hold ourselves.

Regarding your specific point about using recent context to inform political opinions, if you spend any amount of time listening to the opinions of people online you'll find that not only do they fail to accurately recall past events, but they don't bother to research what actually happened, and when they do they fail at anything but the most superficial political analysis.

[squigz]

> We've gotten this far because we've been playing life on easy mode with a ridiculously nurturing planet and practically unlimited energy available under the ground, but we aren't smart enough or forward thinking enough to take on the minor pain necessary to avoid the catastrophe we are lumbering towards. We are short-sighted, selfish, self-important, and we haven't earned the regard in which we hold ourselves.

Where's your "factual basis" for such assertions?

> Regarding your specific point about using recent context to inform political opinions, if you spend any amount of time listening to the opinions of people online you'll find that not only do they fail to accurately recall past events, but they don't bother to research what actually happened, and when they do they fail at anything but the most superficial political analysis.

1) People regularly online are a rather specific group

2) People sharing their opinions online are a very specific group

3) Basing your views on society at large on opinions of those groups is a risky strategy, especially given how easy it has become to spread propaganda online

Anyway as for my optimism, it's based on actually interacting with people directly. Having discussions with them. Talking to them about what they believe, and why. They're usually a lot more complex and intelligent than those various descriptors used above.

[basisword]

>> that does not lend itself to be democratic, because it is way longer than most people's attention span

The attention span of the general public _shouldn't_ matter. That's why we elect politicians.

[forgetfulness]

That could still be democratic in principle if it weren’t for lobbyists

If legislative processes are so drawn out and complex that no more than a handful of ordinary citizens could keep track of them, the advantage that paid lobbyists have over the public is enormous

[saubeidl]

That's where Unions and NGOs come in. Their job is to be lobbyists for the people, against corporate power.

[Xelbair]

Is the process democratic if citizen's opinions are irrelevant?

No matter who's in charge, no matter the election results, no matter the protests - the same style of legislation is pushed.

and once something's in it is almost impossible to remove.

[iso1631]

That describes pretty much every democratic government in the world, from the USA to New Zealand

[graemep]

> The attention span of the general public _shouldn't_ matter. That's why we elect politicians.

It would work if we could elect politicians who were both competent and trustworthy.

Of course that would require successfully electing people who are competent about a broad range of issues, able to see through well funded and clever lobbying, unblinded by ideology, and able to resist pressure.

[andrepd]

> Because it doesn't, people are just embarrassingly ignorant of how the EU legislative process works

Hmm, now whose fault is it that the EU institutions are so complicated and opaque? The citizens? The journalists? Or maybe...?

[andriamanitra]

Complicated, sure, but opaque? EU is incredibly transparent – the amount of information on the European Council website [1] is daunting. There are vote results, meeting schedules, agendas, background briefs, lists of participants, reports, recordings of public council sessions, and so on and so on. All publicly available in each of the 24 EU official languages for whoever cares enough to look. And it's not just the council! The EU Treaties and Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU gives any EU citizen the right to access documents possessed by EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies (with a few exceptions for eg. public security and military matters) [2].

The problem is mostly the sheer amount of things going on, you couldn't possibly keep up with it all.

[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/

[2] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/document/en/163352

[arlort]

They're not complicated for anyone with above room temperature IQ. And they're almost identical to how it works in the member countries anyway

And in a democracy if you don't know how your own laws are made the fault is always yours as a voter

[hn_throw2025]

Identical in every respect other than those with the power to initiate legislation are completely immune to voter displeasure. The Commission have no direct link to the electorate and the your country's (sorry, “state”) Council representatives can hide behind collective consensus.

[arlort]

> the power to initiate legislation are completely immune to voter displeasure

Completely immune is overstating it, and the power to initiate legislation is not that meaningful given that the EC initiates what the council tells it to initiate and can't actually turn it into law without parliament and council

[surgical_fire]

> Identical in every respect other than those with the power to initiate legislation are completely immune to voter displeasure.

You are aware that those with power to initiate legislation are appointed by national governments right?

If you are unhappy with how your country posed itself in those propositions, you can and should vote for parties that have different stances.

[lenkite]

How do the people kick out a EU representative ? Without the power to do so, it is not a "democracy".

[surgical_fire]

There are elections for the EU parliament.

As for council or commission, I presume you can elect different national governments from time to time? I mean, unless you are in Hungary.

[hn_throw2025]

Your link to the Commission and Council is homeopathic democracy, right?

In the UK with a Parliamentary democracy, unpopular policy ideas can be abandoned. Manifestos are not always adhered to, but they typically include ideas that their canvassers can sell on the doorstep and there is robust media criticism when they abandon their promises. We have a strong history of U turns because our politicians are wary of unpopularity. The most recent big backlash was the Winter Fuel Allowance cut which was proposed by the two parties (with the Treasury pushing for it behind the scenes) and abandoned by both due to deep unpopularity in the Country. Even the budget this week had a run-up where various fiscal changes were unofficially floated through the media, to see which ones had the smallest backlash.

This is completely different to the EU, where the Commission and Council arguably get what they want even if it takes several attempts.

[gpderetta]

Interesting you say that, after the UK already passed the equivalent of Chat Control with cross party support, without the law being part of the mandate of either party.

[surgical_fire]

You speak as if the Commission and Council are somehow divorced from ne national governments of the member states.

Those are not Lovecraftian entities that came from undersea. Their members are appointed from the national governments. If you dislike how your country position itself on those organs, this should change your view on how the ruling parties in your country took decisions at the EU level.

[elenchev]

Why do people get so defensive about obviously flawed processes? This reply reads like a 4chan comment written by a frustrated teenager

[input_sh]

Quite the contrary, you don't get to claim that the entire process is flawed while failing to demonstrate even the most basic understanding of it.

[4bpp]

"The plans for scanning your chats were on display for fifty Earth years at the local planning department in Alpha Centauri"?

Nobody's attention span is infinite. I don't doubt I could understand all details of the EU legislative process and keep track of what sort of terrible proposals are underway if I put in the time, but I have a day job, hobbies that are frankly more interesting, and enough national legislation to keep track of.

If you then also say that the outcome is still my responsibility as a voter, then it seems like the logical solution is that I should vote for whatever leave/obstruct-the-EU option is on the menu. I don't understand why I am obliged to surrender either a large and ever-growing slice of my attention or my one-over-400something-million share of sovereignty.

[oblio]

> I don't understand why I am obliged to surrender either a large and ever-growing slice of my attention or my one-over-400something-million share of sovereignty.

Because your puny state is no match for the US, China or soon enough, India. Heck, even Russia in its current incarnation outmatches 80% of the EU countries.

That's it, it's that simple, conceptually.

It's basically the Articles of Confederation vs the Constitution of the United States.

Yes, it's not a pretty process, but the alternative is worse.

We can all live in La-La-Land and pretend we're hobbits living in the Shire ("Keep your nose out of trouble and no trouble will come to you") until reality comes crashing down.

[4bpp]

If the end result is going to be that the EU turns into Russia or China under the pretext of standing up to them (because apparently building an opaque process that civil society can't keep up with to ram through authoritarian laws is what it takes to be competitive?), then I'd rather they cut out the extra steps and let the Russians/Chinese take over. At least then nobody would be telling me that what I got is the outcome of some sacred democratic process I am obliged to respect.

[anonymous908213]

Why, then, is the supposed anti-US/China/India/Russia power bloc trying to pass laws to mandate absolute surveillance of all private communications? If the EU is going to continue attempting to legislate away people's freedoms for purposes that are completely out of scope for the reason it exists, then the natural result is that people will turn on the EU. There is little purpose in staving off the surrendering of independence to US/China if the process entails surrendering even more freedom than they would demand to the EU, all the more so when the EU already rolls over to the US/China on almost everything anyways. I am supportive of a pan-European unification in theory, but if the result looks anything like this, no wonder people are disillusioned with the European project. With friends like the EU, who needs enemies?

[oblio]

Every government has abhorrent proposals. This is a PROPOSAL.

Then proposals maybe turn into laws, through a complex process. We are HERE.

A good government doesn't have many with abhorrent LAWS.

[surgical_fire]

> Hmm, now whose fault is it that the EU institutions are so complicated and opaque? The citizens? The journalists? Or maybe...?

They are not. People just don't bother themselves to spend half a calory in brain power to read even the Wikipedia page about it, and just repeat shit they read in forum posts.

I mean, here on HN, a website where people are supposedly slightly above average in terms of being able to read shit, the amount of times I read how EU is "bureacrats in Brussels" "pushing hard for changes" is weird.

[Xelbair]

The issue is not with the lack of understanding of "process". But sheer frustration because there's nothing you can do as just a citizen. An unelected council of !notAyatollah has decided, and this thing is being pushed at glacier slow pace.

If EU is a trade union this is a severe overreach, if EU wants to be a federation, there's not enough checks and balances. This is the crux of the problem.

The issue is that this is a legislation that only ones in power want(censorship on communications channel where they themselves are exempt from it), that has been pushed over and over again under different names(it goes so far back - it started with ACTA talks and extreme surveillance proposals to fight copyright violations) and details in implementation and/or excuse(this time we get classic "think of the children")

[saubeidl]

The Council is a meeting of the heads of state, all of which are elected in their respective countries.

Your problem is with the leadership of countries, not with the EU as an institution. I agree that it is a problem btw, but I think you got the wrong culprit. This isn't pushed on the states by the EU, this is the states using the EU to push it and launder the bad publicity.

[Xelbair]

My problem is that i as a citizen can vote for my heads of state, but if other parts of EU decided something my vote is null and void, EVEN if majority of EU citizens are against such issue.

Imagine is those issues were campaign promises and part of internal(country's) elections - they aren't in reality but we can set that aside for now. as it was extremely well said by sibling post.

My country is 80% against 20% in favor(in practice it is even more skewed towards 'no' for chat control!), other EU countries are 51% for, 49% against.

Yet such 'vote' by heads of state counts whole countries in,if you were to count individual votes majority of EU citizens would be against it.

This allows you to pass undesirable or extremely contentious legislation, that would most likely prevent you from being elected in the future in your local elections but you can easily shift the blame too!

This is as far form democracy as possible, it is pure bureaucracy that serves it's own goals.

[kmeisthax]

The irony is that this is all because the EU was specifically designed to not supercede its member states. In other words, they repeated the same mistake[0] the US did. Fixing it - i.e. ditching all the appointed positions that are responsive to nation states only - would amount to federalizing the EU.

"But why can't we just leave the EU to stop this" - too late. Most EU countries have enough intra-EU migration and trade to make leaving unthinkable. The UK was a special case - and, ironically enough, actually responsible for some of the EU's worst decisions.

Furthermore, this isn't exactly an EU exclusive problem. Every supranational organization that is responsive to member states and not individual voters is a policy laundering mechanism. Ask yourself: where's your representation in the WTO, and when did you vote for them? The sum of democracy and democracy is dictatorship. Any governing body that does not respect all of its voters equally is ripe for subsumption by people who do not respect them at all.

[0] Originally, US senators were appointed by state governors. This eventually resulted in everyone voting for whatever governor promised to appoint the senator the voter wanted. Which is sort of like throwing away your gubernatorial vote for a senatorial one. This is why we amended the constitution to allow direct election of senators, and I hold that any sovereign nation that makes the mistake of appointed politicians will inevitably have to either abandon it or fail.

[saubeidl]

This brings up a structural issue with the EU as it is designed right now - trying to give maximum power to nation states.

A unitary state would solve that problem by allowing us to have simple, Union-wide elections instead.

[Xelbair]

The issue is that EU is stuck in-between federation(which requires more checks and balances), and a trade union - which should concern themselves with just trade regulations.

[iso1631]

In the UK all I can do is vote for my member of parliament. The victorious member may or may not get in with a majority of votes (about half get under 50%)

They then in effect elect a Prime Minister, who appoints an executive, who create laws and then put them to parliament

In the US you can vote for the leader of the executive directly. 64% of Vermont voted for Harris, yet they still got Trump.

> in practice it is even more skewed towards 'no' for chat control

My understanding is that the public as a whole do not want chat control, yet the democratically elected heads of each member government do want it. The problem here is the democratically elected heads of each member government.

Doesn't take many council members to be against it to stop it in its tracks.

[anonymous908213]

The culprit is correct. If the EU exists for political laundering, then it is the organisation which is harmful to the people's interests. Nobody voted for any of these heads of states on a platform of enacting Chat Control. That was not on the ballot or the platform of any party in any individual EU country. If it was, they would not have voted for it. If an individual party tried to initiate a chat control bill in its own country, it would surely face a massive reckoning at the next election[1]. Therefore, an individual party would likely not undertake to enact chat control. It is the existence of the EU which is enabling politicians to force undesirable legislation on their populace. In that environment, it is entirely correct to call the EU an un-democratic process. If it exists to pass legislation nobody would vote for and take the blame, then it will in fact be rightfully at blame and provide a strong motivation for people to exit the EU.

[1] In fact, we have helpfully seen this play out with our friendly early exiter. The remarkably self-destructive Labour party has passed their own absolute nonsense "online safety" bill, and are likely to be utterly destroyed in the next election with repealing the bill being part of the platform of the party that is polling at ~twice the share of the next largest party. With the EU providing blame-as-a-service, though, it is unlikely that anybody will be able to repeal Chat Control once rammed through, without exiting the EU entirely.

[saubeidl]

You provide your own counterexample. The UK left the EU and all it got for it was a quicker passing of it's "online safety" nonsense with none of the checks and balances (EU parliament, ECHR) that would stop it in the EU.

[iso1631]

80% of the UK public were in favour of the "online safety" idiocy.

[foldr]

ECHR is still part of UK law (but I agree with your overall point).