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by doikor 32 days ago
> where national laws and EU laws conflict

EU doesn’t really have laws just directives and regulations it excepts every individual member to implement.

Sometimes there are disputes on the implementations that are then fought over in the eu courts but if the member county really doesn’t want to implement or follow them there really isn’t much outside of withholding funds eu can do. (For example see Hungary under Orban)

EU just doesn’t have the monopoly of violence like the federal government effective has in the US to enforce its will on the member states with force if necessary. EU quite literally doesn’t have a police or military force at all.

1 comments

US states follow US federal law for much of the same reason, because the federal government will withhold funds. We do not use our military to force states to comply with federal law. There’s an entire court system to handle governors who ignore federal law.

“Threat of violence”…lmao

> There’s an entire court system to handle governors who ignore federal law.

And if there wasn’t a federal police force (or national guard put under federal control in the more extreme end) to enforce those decisions of such court would they matter in the more extreme cases?

EU cut Orbans funding and still he kept doing what he was doing and as there is no way to for EU to enforce its decisions beyond that he kept doing it until voted out of office.

That is a massive difference between the 2 systems. In EU the individual states are truly independent in that EU can’t force them to do anything.

For the record EU also has the courts etc but when they rule against a country it is pretty much reliant on the courty going “ok I will pay” as the court doesn’t have any means to actually enforce its decision.

Also there is 9 member states in EU that pay more then they receive from the EU so withholding funds from them will just lead to them not paying their fees. Obviously US has states like this too.

> We do not use our military to force states to comply with federal law.

Isn't the National Guard in the US considered to be a part of the military? I seem to recall that they were federalized/deployed at least twice recently, because supposedly state-actors/police didn't do enough to combat violence, or to protect federal workers or something like that?

Also, hasn't the current administration threaten to deploy the National Guard even more times, because the states are not following what the administration believes are the federal laws? Or what was the reason for those "threats"?

A National Guard's chain of command has the Governor of the state as the head of each State's National Guard. There are conditions where command can temporarily be redirected under federal control, but those are somewhat limited in practice. Usually even under certain emergencies, the technical command structure is still at a state level.

There are a lot of reasons behind some of these distinctions, and some interesting history. But the National Guard kind of serves as the official Militia for each given state... But is far from the coverage meant for what a militia should be when compared to say the first militia act under US law.

Edit: regarding any requests/threats of use... it's generally voluntary use of guardsmen from a state whose governor is friendly to the federal/presidential administration. Hence seeing national guard deployed from one state in order to handle what the president considers an emergency in another state when that state refuses a request.