[netcan]

There are layers upon layers of problems here.

1. EU democracy and governance is not great. Very few europeans have any understanding of how the EU legislative process works or feel like they have anything to do with it.

2. Lobbying is increasingly making a mockery of consultation as an idea.

3. These laws are pretty technical and the people making them have no understanding of the issues. They don't need lobbyists to make stupid laws. See the UK/EU cookie laws for an example. They mandated that all sites must have nag screens. They cost the economy money. Annoy all european website users and achieved absolutely nothing useful. Malice may have had some role, but incompetence had a bigger one in that case.

I wish the EU would think creatively about its whole legislative process.

[onemorepassword]

Although I agree with all of your points, let's keep one thing very clear: if it were left up to national governments (with the possible exception of Germany), civil rights protections in the EU would be considerably worse of.

National governments are directly pressured by the US, and MEP's are relatively independent from national politics compared to their national counterparts.

It's the corrupt national governments that tried to push ACTA trough the EU parliament (and failed) and it's those same governments that are now pressuring the EU to lift privacy protections.

The influence of lobbyists is not an EU problem, quite the contrary. It's the supposedly more democratic and transparent national governments that sell us out.

[cabalamat]

> Very few europeans have any understanding of how the EU legislative process works

This is true. I'm trying to combat this (in the UK) with http://www.euroelection.co.uk/

> or feel like they have anything to do with it.

Which is why turnout is low and falling.

> These laws are pretty technical and the people making them have no understanding of the issues.

Hopefully the situation will be better in the EP after 2014, if more Pirates are elected (there are 2 at present). Then it will be a lot harder for lobbyists to baffle people with bullshit on internet and copyright issues.

[popee]

Can you define Pirate party politics? When you think about it's not party, it's movement and because of that it should ugrently define coherent politics or it will be 'less elected'. Pirates don't have consistetnt politics! I had impression it's center to left, but talking to some member i got impression that spectrum is from total right to total left. Btw i'm (still) party memeber, but i don't freaking like when some conservative facebook hipsters (that, for example, don't know anything about GPL) talk about what it's all about. Sad stuff :-(

[cabalamat]

> Can you define Pirate party politics?

Yes; Pirates are a civil liberty party (actaully a series of parties) for the interent age. We want freedom on the internet. We also care about over-reaching intellectual property laws in other fields, e.g. where drug patents kill people.

> When you think about it's not party, it's movement

Pirate Parties are political parties. They are also part of a milieu of wider movements such as file sharing, creative commons, free software / open source, Anonymous.

> and because of that it should ugrently define coherent politics or it will be 'less elected'.

If you mean that Pirates need to have polices on what are not core Pirate issues, in order to get elected, I agree.

> Pirates don't have consistetnt politics! I had impression it's center to left, but talking to some member i got impression that spectrum is from total right to total left.

It's true that not every Pirate is of the same mind on every issue. This is also the case with all other political parties.

Speaking about Pirate Party UK (of which I am a Governor) I would describe it as broadly center-left.

> but i don't freaking like when some conservative facebook hipsters (that, for example, don't know anything about GPL) talk about what it's all about.

If they are wrong on something, then I suggest you point that out to them.

[rmc]

Actually a lot of EU directives are relatively easy to read. It only gets complex and legalese when national governments transpose them into national law.

[netcan]

I'm not talking about the language. I mean that if you ask someone in Italy or Poland how reps get elected, what their job is, what sort of laws they can make, how they get enforced locally, how you can participate, etc., then they have no idea.

It feels more like the American IRS than the Congress.

[sgift]

> what sort of laws they can make

None. This is the reason the EU parliament is no real parliament. It lacks the option to make law and can only say "yes", "no" and "change this, then we may like it". In legal terms: The EU parliament lacks the right of initiative. Only the EU commission has this right.

[rmc]

But then ask the same to those people of their own national governments, or political structure. Many don't understand how their own country works.

Should we abolish or get rid of national governments? Why are you holding the EU to a different standard?

[the_watcher]

Much of the EU is unelected and unaccountable as compared to national governments. It's more a bureaucracy than a legislature. I don't want to pass too much judgement since I am far from an EU scholar, but tat unaccountability seems to remove an incentive to learn about the processes, since you will have less of an opportunity to change it.

[flexie]

All members of the European Parliament are directly elected. The entire Council consists of the member states' ministers, which are elected politicians in their home states or appointed by elected politicians. The Commission too consists solely of persons appointed by elected politicians.

I too would like more direct elections and more openness in the legislative process but that does not come from lobbyists paid by American companies.

[rmc]

Much of the EU is elected. The European Parliament is directly elected by the people, and the Commission is chosen by governments that are elected by the people, and the Council of Minister is the elected people themselves.

Any complaint about unelectedness of the EU could easily be applied to (say) the UK, or any other EU country. The UK civil service isn't elected by the people, but is instead sorta controlled by the directly elected people. David Cameron is current UK Prime Minister, but only the people of Witney could vote for/against him. Is that democratic? Actually commissioners change more often than members of the UK civil service, so the EU is probably more democratic.

Complaints about the unaccountability of EU by the people could just as easily apply to many other EU countries (like UK). How many people in the UK vote regularly? It shows that many people don't know/care about the process.

These arguments about 'the unelected and unaccountable EU' are really just misleading arguments, since those complaints aren't used against other unelected or unaccountable governments like the UK, but are only used against the EU. England alone used to be 7 different kingdoms (~1,500 years ago), why not split it back like that again if the UK government is so undemocratic?

[homosaur]

I think you mean when the EU overlords give directives and then the slave countries are forced to manipulate language and law to make those directives legal in their nations.

Hyperbole? Only sorta.

[sgift]

Directives of the "EU overlords" have to be accepted by the Council of the European Union, which represents the "slave countries".

[homosaur]

Oh, you mean the non-elected social club for European elites? Yeah, part of the problem.

[sgift]

The last time I checked ministers are part of national governments which are (indirectly, depending on the specific country) elected.

[mtgx]

There are some pretty smart young people behind the Data Protection law, but these US lobbyists seem to want to water it down a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYsE6s2FFqI

In the video they also mention how they maybe get to talk to politicians once every 3 months (because of budget constraints) while lobbyists are there every day talking to them.

[twmb]

Actually most of the EU democracy processes are easy to understand. I'd like to see a European comment on the efficacy of their process. Most follow a proportional system, some follow a mix of proportional and single member single district (winner take all), and Great Britain is winner take all.

They also have much more party discipline. Somebody voting for a party knows the type of policies that party will enforce, and if people are not crazy for the policies being passed, the vote in a different party in the next election.

Also, I would argue that lobbying is more prevalent in the US. Low party discipline + the much greater "need" for money = more money influence.

[cabalamat]

> Most follow a proportional system, some follow a mix of proportional and single member single district (winner take all), and Great Britain is winner take all.

To clarify:

- all seats in the European Parliament are elected by proportional systems, either STV or list systems.

- the parliaments of EU member states are elected by a wide variety of systems, including list systems, STV, winner takes all (FPTP, in Britain), two-round winner takes all (France).

> They also have much more party discipline.

Are you talking about member states' parliaments here, or the EU parliament?

[twmb]

My mistake, has jules pointed out below I was confusing the EU parliament for the European member states.

[jules]

You are confusing the governance on the European (edit: EU -- see below) level with the governments on the national level.

[fulafel]

Europe != EU

[znowi]

I'm not sure why is it the top comment.

EU democracy may not be great, but it's a lot better than American, in terms of social justice. Lobbying, especially its American variation, is well known for its corruptive quality. And the mentioned cookie law, though an oversight, still, in essence is a preferable direction protecting our privacy, in contrast to we own all your data defaults of the US.

Although, I agree with the closing sentiment that a wider awareness of the legislative process would be desired, I think the focus in the scope of this article should be on the US lobbying practices in the EU and the Data Protection reform, in particular.

[axelfreeman]

I agree with you. The result of the "cookie law" is stupid, but this is an interpretation of the webmasters. The law says that you must ask before you save data on the clientside if its not the main reason. But there are still many questions.

Why couldn't they say: We have a tracking-problem let's force to use do-not-track or make better default cookie options? Problem solved.