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EU Commissioner Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By EU Parliament

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Re: EU Commissioner Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By EU Parliament

#32
post #20
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where would that leave us ? Massive recession in Germany, Bankrupcy for the southern nations, a few hurt nations (France, Italy, others) closing their borders to try to survive on their own, and the UK surviving as a dependency of the US. With fascist parties triumphing everywhere around (they are already doing 20%+ in a lot of countries, there are even nazis in the Greek parliament now). And, of course, global e…

Which are these fascist parties in Europe? Seriously, I live in Europe and never seen any. In most EU countries propagating nazi ideology is criminal offense.

He is taking an easy shortcut (nationalist == nazi) but his message stands: however you call it the ideological family to which once belonged the Nazis and their friends is making progress everywhere in Europe. The FN here, in France being the first example that comes to my mind but similar things happen in the Nederlands, in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, in Austria… We are far from the Germany-1933 situation, but we don't want it to come back do we?

Re: EU Commissioner Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By EU Parliament

#33
post #20
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where would that leave us ? Massive recession in Germany, Bankrupcy for the southern nations, a few hurt nations (France, Italy, others) closing their borders to try to survive on their own, and the UK surviving as a dependency of the US. With fascist parties triumphing everywhere around (they are already doing 20%+ in a lot of countries, there are even nazis in the Greek parliament now). And, of course, global e…

Which are these fascist parties in Europe? Seriously, I live in Europe and never seen any. In most EU countries propagating nazi ideology is criminal offense.

Anything described as ultra-rightwing are fascist in sheep's clothing.

I know of openly fascist Golden Dawn party from Greece. And I think there are Tricolour Flame, New Force and National Social Front in Italy.

There are also plenty of horrible evil parties with a similar agenda (but not identifying as right-wing or fascist) growing like mushrooms all over rest of the Europian continent.

Re: EU Commissioner Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By EU Parliament

#34
post #20
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where would that leave us ? Massive recession in Germany, Bankrupcy for the southern nations, a few hurt nations (France, Italy, others) closing their borders to try to survive on their own, and the UK surviving as a dependency of the US. With fascist parties triumphing everywhere around (they are already doing 20%+ in a lot of countries, there are even nazis in the Greek parliament now). And, of course, global e…

Which are these fascist parties in Europe? Seriously, I live in Europe and never seen any. In most EU countries propagating nazi ideology is criminal offense.

> Seriously, I live in Europe and never seen any.

Then you couldn't have looked too hard. The NPD is present in 2 German Landtage, and most European countries come with their own flavour of right-wing nuts.

Re: EU Commissioner Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By EU Parliament

#35
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where would that leave us ? Massive recession in Germany, Bankrupcy for the southern nations, a few hurt nations (France, Italy, others) closing their borders to try to survive on their own, and the UK surviving as a dependency of the US. With fascist parties triumphing everywhere around (they are already doing 20%+ in a lot of countries, there are even nazis in the Greek parliament now). And, of course, global e…

These "facists" and "nazis" are there as a reaction to the EU. They're the only ones people can vote for to express a negative opinion on the EU. If the EU disappears, they'll have survive on their actual ideology instead, and then they'll disappear again. And regarding the financials, the EEA and Schengen are perfectly fine. Norway, Switzerland etc don't have significantly higher barriers to trade. Personally I'm pr…

> They're the only ones people can vote for to express a negative opinion on the EU.

Demonstrably false. There are many decent parties whose position is "we want to stay in the EU, but a completely reformed and much better EU". People unsatisfied with current EU politics could vote them.

Most of the votes for neo-fascist parties are votes that come from fear (of other cultures or of losing money/job) or ignorance (as in "poor education"). Checkout the journal article "The Support Base of Radical Right Parties in the Enlarged European Union" [1] that analyses the demographics of the voters of neo-fascist parties in current EU.

[1] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07036330903145930

Re: EU Commissioner Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By EU Parliament

#36
post #28
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand, why having Commision that isn't elected makes EU members more suvereign? What would change for worse, if Commision was elected like Parliament?

The commission basically represents the governments of the individual member countries. Because it has the most power by far of all the european institutions, this means that the governments in turn can exercise power at the EU level in a fairly unimpeded fashion. If the legislative power were transferred away from the commission to the parliament (where it should be, if EU governance were to follow the standard appr…

In principle yes, but in practice that's not always the case. Once chosen, a member state can't remove a commissioner, even if they're willing to. Simply there's no way. Now they have to wait until 2014. Imagine that some political party has (actually) appointed a commissioner because they won the national elections, not much democratic but it's something. Next election they lose, and the new government can't change the commissioner, where's democracy now? If only the commissioners would be elected at the European Elections, the whole Commission idea would make some sense.

Re: EU Commissioner Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By EU Parliament

#37

Good news. Strengthens the case significantly for the EU to be abandoned.

No. It strengthens the case for changing the EU, it doesn't strengthen any particular argument for the future state.

Abandoning the EU today would be an economic and social catastrophe, since it requires the re-erection of barriers at borders over which massive free flows of trade and labour currently exist. Germany's exports would be annihilated, the central European labour pool would be stranded, and several reintroduced currencies would collapse overnight.

It equally well strengthens the case for increased federalism, towards a United States of Europe with a federal parliament that actually can curb the actions of the Commission, and a single central bank (rather than today's messy compromise) to correct the failed madness of nation states that can issue bonds but cannot issue money.

Re: EU Commissioner Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By EU Parliament

#38
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is, that while it would increase the democracy of EU, it would also decrease perceived sovereignty of individual countries. A lot of progress in EU seems to be hampered by OMG NATIONAL IDENTITY, actually, and democratization is just one of those.

I don't understand, why having Commision that isn't elected makes EU members more suvereign? What would change for worse, if Commision was elected like Parliament?

It's actually about perception — the Commission is selected by the governments in a diplomatic process. Of course the reality is way more complicated, but in this particular case the perception matters a lot. This is quite unfortunate, and changing this perceptions is, in my opinion, one of the foremost challenges to euroenthusiasts like me.

Re: EU Commissioner Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By EU Parliament

#39
post #20
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where would that leave us ? Massive recession in Germany, Bankrupcy for the southern nations, a few hurt nations (France, Italy, others) closing their borders to try to survive on their own, and the UK surviving as a dependency of the US. With fascist parties triumphing everywhere around (they are already doing 20%+ in a lot of countries, there are even nazis in the Greek parliament now). And, of course, global e…

Which are these fascist parties in Europe? Seriously, I live in Europe and never seen any. In most EU countries propagating nazi ideology is criminal offense.

I live in Austria. There is one nationalist, populist party with a number of neo-nazis in there called FPÖ. It doesn't have too much power yet, but it's there. However, since most people have a deep hate of Nazis and everything that looks like it could this party knows it can't grow, if it remains that far to the right. That's why they currently throw out most of these members. Also, there have been two huge split-offs (LIF (liberals) and BZÖ (no idea what they are)). They have been the result of being too nationalistic.

Then there is Germany, which has an even more right wing movement called NPD. They clearly position themselves as far-right. They are mostly a party for skinheads/neo-nazi and don't really attract others. This party is considered too radical by most Germans and by all other parties.

Still nothing compared with what's going on Hungary. The problem there is that their nationalist party actually has power and in the recent years they killed off a lot of democratic elements, like the free press.

I know that there also is a nationalist, populist party in Switzerland, but I know nothing about it.

Also there are a few nationalist movements going on in a number of northern Europe countries, like Belgium and in countries where it has reason in more recent history, like Serbia.

It however seems to be a global problem. The US have always been very nationalist and a bit fascist, as you can see by flags everywhere and how important military is there. But it's way harder to distinguish them there, because there is these huge republican party which has the very extreme people, but also very, very liberal ones. Hard to tell whether that's good or bad. Well, you now have stuff like the tea party movement, which can be to compared not with the real nazi-like parties, but at least with the conservative, nationalist populist parties, often using religious symbols. From what I get I think they are really similar to the Austrian FPÖ.

But also Russia and virtually every country has such movements. On one side they have to be there in a democratic society and it's better if they create parties than doing other stuff, but on the other hand it's really bad when they become so big.

Re: EU Commissioner Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By EU Parliament

#40
That guy was a shame when he was a minister of foreign affairs back in Belgium, creating multiple diplomatic incidents and controversies (with the Netherlands - calling the prime minister a mix of harry potter and a rigid bourgeois, the Congo, the jewish community, etc), it's no wonders he's a shame in the EU...
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