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EU Integrity Watch

integritywatch.eu

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Re: EU Integrity Watch

#31

Post by ClumsyPilot »

arp242 wrote: post #30
hcfman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have the King's commissioner in the Netherlands. I've read interviews with him and articles about him. They say he's like a watch dog against corruption in the province. I tried to arrange for a meeting with him to report some serious corruption. I they ignored me. I called every week for six weeks. Then I was told I'd get a response by mail. I did indeed get a response and from the King's commissioner. He…

What kind of corruption are we talking about?

thats the poibt, the commissioner didnt even want to know what kind it is

Re: EU Integrity Watch

#33

Post by ClumsyPilot »

paganel wrote: post #21
RandomLensman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In quite a few European countries the government isn't directly elected - so "unelected" is a bit tricky here unless you are extending that to those national governments, too.

Of course that I'm extending that to any unelected government/political entity whose decisions happen to affect people's lives on a national level (so I'm skipping the discussion about the unelected local "mayors"/leaders from some big European cities, even though a discussion should be had even there). Thing is that during the last 10 or 15 years (things seem to have accelerated after the latest big financial crisis…

> unelected government/political entity whose decisions happen to affect people's lives on a national level

You mean like department for transport, or, you know, the national bank?

Sets interest rate, prints money, entirely unelected, the most important institution in the country.

Re: EU Integrity Watch

#34

Post by RandomLensman »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #33
paganel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course that I'm extending that to any unelected government/political entity whose decisions happen to affect people's lives on a national level (so I'm skipping the discussion about the unelected local "mayors"/leaders from some big European cities, even though a discussion should be had even there). Thing is that during the last 10 or 15 years (things seem to have accelerated after the latest big financial crisis…

> unelected government/political entity whose decisions happen to affect people's lives on a national level You mean like department for transport, or, you know, the national bank? Sets interest rate, prints money, entirely unelected, the most important institution in the country.

Societies are free to change how these things are run - and depending where you are, they did change in the not too distance past, e.g., Bank of England in the 1990s becoming independent as rate setter.

Re: EU Integrity Watch

#35

Post by franga2000 »

jongjong wrote: post #10

The amount of government corruption everywhere is unfathomable. They're essentially handing out billions worth of contracts to their friends... This crony-economy dominates every aspect of our lives as it's not possible for honest businesses to compete against businesses that are backed by easy government money. It's very much like slavery. The only significant difference is that instead of having two classes of peop…

This is in no way unique to the government. The private sector operates on basically the same rules, but with even less oversight. CEOs meet up for golf and make a secret exclusivity deal, shareholders buy a company and then force their other companies to do business with it, a company buys the company it used to buy from so they get a better price than their competitors... At least when politicians do it, you can track it and at least try to do something about it.

> All while the real economy disintegrates and concentrates in fewer and fewer hands

Exactly! Even "the real economy" (by which I guess you mean the part of the private sector that doesn't take any government tenders and subsidies) is consolidating in the hands of a few unimaginably rich private organisations. This isn't a problem of governments, it's a problem of "free-market" capitalism. If you try to compete, they try to buy you out and if you refuse, they use their near-limitless pile of money to essentially buy your market share and drive you out of business.

Re: EU Integrity Watch

#36

Post by gafage »

arp242 wrote: post #25
paganel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on this forum for 16 years, 17 years soon if God permits, I've just added an anti-European Commission comment somewhere else in this thread, hope that helps keeping score with who's saying what.

Pretty sure your comment wasn't what was intended, as it hadn't been posted yet. And let's not pretend the comments being referred to are reasonable. They're flagged and dead for a reason.

"revert the EU to its original purpose, before it was taken over by overreaching bureaucrats: A free trade area."

That seems completely reasonable.

Re: EU Integrity Watch

#37

Post by supriyo-biswas »

nona wrote: post #7

The first three comments within the hour that this article was posted, were made by a 10-minutes old account and seem suspiciously like anti-EU astroturfing. Makes me hope or wish for a cross-website pseudonymous karma system, to at least rein in this kind of public opinion gaming. Back on-topic: this website seems to be a net positive, already it's challenging some of my preconceptions in that some EU member states…

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

Re: EU Integrity Watch

#38

Post by sylware »

pjmlp wrote: post #29
sylware wrote: post #6

How are EU citizens going to prevent a politician favoring for the wrong reasons some big corps while mandated (by doing things... or carefully not doing anything...) and ending up, after his/her mandate, in some proxy of this big corp to be thanked "nicely" (from the bottom of big corp wallet). It is very important to draw a clear line between "right" and "wrong" reasons, because all policitians after their mandate…

Usually lobbing on this side of the pound is considered corruption, and even though there are several politicians that get away with it, there are also several others that have had to face the courts.

It can be very tough to detect: for instance Big Tech has bazillions of proxies or "friendly" companies/corps, and while "in power", they just have to do that: be careful that no significant and efficient regulation is setup (for instance noscript/basic (x)html portals for all "utility" online services, where reasonable).

Not to mention: how do you legally "track" where politicians are going after their mandate? Do they have the obligation to publish their source of income or wealth after their mandate for a significant amount of (10+) years?

And how to draw the lines between "right" and "wrong" in order to decide to seek justice.

For instance in my country it seems a politician was involved in facilitating some russian gaz stuff, and with the war for ukraine, we all discovered he was a high level executive in a gazprom proxy. He had to leave because of the war, and it is only because of that that we found out.

You can easily extrapolate that case to others, and most won't probably be detected unless there are people/orgs actively tracking them and their resources for a significant amount of time.

Re: EU Integrity Watch

#39

Post by Sweepi »

paganel wrote: post #12

> decisions made by politicians in the European Union I just want my life not to be controlled anymore by an unelected thingie such as the European Commission, as such, shifting the blame on provincial (because that's what they are by now, anyway) politicians is just very counter-productive. And then the powers that be will act surprised when they see that anti-EU sentiment is gaining ground (it's the Russians' fault…

> And then the powers that be will act surprised when they see that anti-EU sentiment is gaining ground (it's the Russians' fault, of course, if not them, the Chinese or the Iranians, never allow any political agency for people going against unelected supra-national entities such as the European Commission is).

Occam's razor tells me: Its easy for the local politicians to blame "Brussels" for any problem they dont want to deal with / take responsibility for. Its also easy for the population of the respective country to accept this framing, since that relieves them of any responsibility of having voted "the wrong people" into power, or not engaging in politics themselves.

Regarding the "unelected" European Commission: Its members are proposed by the European Council(which is composed of the elected governments of the EU members states) and then subject to a vote of approval by the elected European Parliament. I find it hard to believe that your opinion of the European Commission (or the EU in general) would differ significantly if the European Commission would be elected directly.

Re: EU Integrity Watch

#40

Post by TacticalCoder »

gwnywg wrote: post #19
paganel wrote: post #12

> decisions made by politicians in the European Union I just want my life not to be controlled anymore by an unelected thingie such as the European Commission, as such, shifting the blame on provincial (because that's what they are by now, anyway) politicians is just very counter-productive. And then the powers that be will act surprised when they see that anti-EU sentiment is gaining ground (it's the Russians' fault…

I wonder what are your thoughts about recent acceleration in integration efforts..? It looks strangely familiar to me, though different time and different state actors involved :)

Which integration efforts are you talking about?

In many EU countries big cities have become complete and utter shitholes due to a complete failure to integrate many migrants (both legal and illegal migrants). In some cases there are 70% of migrants neither working nor speaking the country's native language. They're poor people and responsible for a disproportionate percentage of crimes.

People simply cannot stand it anymore.

This in turn has led to a sharp rise of the far-right in many EU countries. In some countries the far-right simply won the election (last one being The Netherlands) but in most countries the far-right is, even if not outright winning yet, gaining huge grounds (Italy, Spain, Greece, France for those I know).

People are, literally, so fed up with immigration many simply vote for the far-right.

As a result we've got the usual politicians turning their jackets inside-out:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/01/the-far-right-is-winnin...

"Mainstream parties across Europe are shifting their positions on immigration in hopes of impeding the rise of the far right."

I don't see any integration effort. The only thing I see is politicians bringing in as many migrants as they can in the EU and now saying they'll stop doing so because they realize they may be losing the next elections.

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