[inglor_cz]

"If not for the EU, a much worse version of this would already be law in the nation states."

In some, in some not. Not everyone is the UK. Many nations which had a totalitarian government in the 20th century are more wary about this sort of sweeping surveillance power.

The "charm" of pushing this through the circuitous path via Brussels is that few people and even few media outlets are paying attention to what happens in Brussels. Everyone is still obsessed with their national politics.

[vrganj]

If the majority of national governments didn't want this, the Council wouldn't push for it. That's literally who the Council is composed of.

I think a good step for transparency would be forcing Council votes to be open so the ire could be redirected at the appropriate national governments instead of letting them EU-wash their unpopular ideas.

[inglor_cz]

That would definitely help a bit.

[constantius]

Exactly. As demonstrated by several countries pronouncing themselves against it every time this comes up.

If the government of Denmark really wants to implement this, let them, but the idea that a tiny country's officials, elected by a population of 6M that their media managed to convince of the utopia to come when privacy doesn't exist, manages to make another 450M in 26 countries comply to their will (not to call it delusion) is frightening.

[inigyou]

They are face-saving. Again, if the country didn't want this, their Council representative would have voted against it.

[inglor_cz]

Sure, you are right, but that does not mean that the EU as such is totally innocent in this.

Most liberal constitutions of Europe operate on the principle that their governments cannot be fully trusted in execution of their power and need a lot of oversight from the people. This is a result of hundreds of years of bad experience with politicans who had too much power.

The EU is somewhat more idealistically built and thus easier to abuse as a loophole for pushing things that would domestically hit a lot of counter-wind - by the same governments that are domestically limited by their constitutional order, but nevertheless still full of power-hungry people who are seeking ways to increase their power.

Frankly, for me that means that the EU should be reformed to make that less easy, but a colossus of 28, soon-to-be-more countries is approximately as amendable as the US Constitution - theoretically, yes, practically, the hurdles are extremely high.

I don't think we can fundamentally solve the problem that politics attracts psychopaths. We can only limit their power, and that, as of now, works better on the national level than on the continental one.

[inigyou]

The EU as an institution has zero enforcement power - I think that is its check or balance. It is more like the UN, than like the USA.