Wonder what they'll do it the US just says no.
*when
> In the wake of large-scale Internet surveillance and reduced trust in the internet, the European Commission today proposes a key reform to the way the Internet is managed and run. The proposal calls for more transparent, accountable and inclusive governance.
This is the justification. What do they want :
a) Control over IP address assignment and root DNS zones.
In other words the power to force anyone off the internet, and the power to revoke and/or change any domain name. They have long attempted, futile, to force thepiratebay off the internet, they even managed to force on of their hosters to kick them out once.
b) A strengthening of the global Internet Governance Forum
I read this as that they are aware that ICANN and IANA have no real power. The real power is in the hands of "tier 1" ISPs and they are locked into an open internet because there is no monopoly.
In other words : they want to eliminate the historical accident that lead to the current level of internet freedom.
c) "A review of conflicts between national laws or jurisdictions that will suggest possible remedies"
Now this one is REALLY important. I read this to mean they want to know how they can impose European law globally through technical means.
Now of course the EU commission itself does large-scale internet surveillance like the US does. With 3 important differences :
1) the cost is borne by the companies, not the EU. Everything is purely based on legal threats, and everybody is everybody's adversary. Meaning for actual crimes, (e.g. missing child) it's effectiveness is pretty much zero.
2) The US has a minimal level of legal oversight. Yes, we're talking secret courts, and top-secret subpaenas. I don't claim it's ideal, but it's better than the EU. Here's how it works in the EU. Firstly any of the executives of the member nations can decide to get information, plus a set of "blessed" EU agencies, like interpol.
Second as opposed to the US where at that point an order is delivered to the intercepting party, where it is evaluated by legal (hopefully, and usually), and then complied with, in the US an ISP is forced to provide interception capabilities on a government VLAN, where they enter the IP(s) they want intercepted and get a live traffic dump. It is actually a crime to check what the government is spying on.
3) Unlike in the US, this data has actually been used for large scale copyright blocking (google "French 3 strikes law" without legal recourse. Yes that's what they used their spying powers for.
Their objective is NOT to eliminate American spying on Europeans, but rather to "harmonize the regulations". In other words, they essentially want access to the NSA data about Americans without oversight. They want to make sure Americans can get disconnected when the MPAA claims 3 times they've downloaded an mp3. They want the ability to disconnect sites that violate EU expression laws (e.g. criticism of some royalty, various outlawed political factions like nazism and marxism, European libel law, trademark protection, ...), they want companies to have to ask them (meaning: pay them) for permission before offering something like Uber anywhere in Europe. They want tax income for international purchases.
Please keep what the UN and the EU are trying to do in mind next time you hear Europeans complain about NSA spying. The only thing the commission is upset about is that they can't spy on Americans the way (they think) Americans can spy on the EU. I'm saying "They think" because while the NSA does appear to have invasive spying, it seems extremely unlikely to me that it has anywhere near the claimed breath.
Please do NOT make the mistake to think this criticism anything but a concerted effort to kill the Internet. It is no different from the UN efforts to do the same [1]. This is the government that didn't so much as voice concern about the protest killings in Turkey.
[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57444629-83/u.n-takeover-of...