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The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

mullvad.net

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Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#141

Post by peoplefromibiza »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #34
mongol wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is EU commissioner Ylva Johansson. Unfortunately, there is not much you can do. She is not elected to this position, but appointed, and in this case by a former government who is no longer in power.

EU seems to have an abundance of unelected regulatory positions. Eurosceptics are right in that EU represents a form of non-democratic decision-making which has the power to supersede (more) democratically formulated laws from member states. Ideally, the autocratic tendencies of the EU and the member states should cancel out by disagreeing with each other, but in reality member states seem unwilling to oppose them mo…

> EU seems to have an abundance of unelected regulatory positions.

Like many other system in the World, elections are to chose people's representatives, not to chose the government nor the technical apparatus (like the EU commission).

The US president is one notable example of non elected position.

Anyway, the proposals must be approved by the parliament, which is elected directly by the EU people in number proportional to the population of the single countries and then ratified by the single EU parliaments, which are again elected by the people.

I wouldn't exactly call it "abundance of unelected regulatory positions".

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#142

Post by marginalia_nu »

photochemsyn wrote: post #30

Suggested alternative: The "End Political Corruption Proposal" "Given that political corruption is rife in European countries, with great detriments to the healthy function of government, all politicians in positions where they may be engaging in corrupt behavior must submit to 24-7 audio and video surveillance, which will be piped over public platforms for crowdsourcing of corruption detection. All personal communic…

All of this would be fixed, and more, if we brought back Athenian style ostracism by public vote!

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#143

Post by makomk »

Spivak wrote: post #16
nnx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to win every time, but they have to win only once.

This is only true if you give up once it passes. Then you only have to win once to get it repealed.

That's not really true in this case, though. The European Commission is the only institution with the power to propose new EU laws, including repeals or modifications of existing ones. They don't need to be watching their back and making sure that no repeal sneaks through because one couldn't even get started unless they did it. Also, they're not really a democratic institution - their members are decided entirely by behind-closed-doors political horse trading by well-connected European political insiders - so replacing them with more trustworthy representatives isn't an option because they don't represent the public anyway even in theory.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#144

Post by gpderetta »

yreg wrote: post #127
revelio wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MEPs don't have the right to change EU law. So it doesn't matter even if they were all voted out and replaced. The commission does what it wants, it's not really a democratic system.

The commission needs a passing vote of approval from the parliament and its president is elected by the parliament. It is a democratic system.

Additionally the Parliament can request the Commission to submit a legislative proposal, and the Parliament can dismiss the Commission at will with a vote of no-confidence. So de-facto it does have some legislative initiative ability, and it is not much different from other legislative systems where the vast majority of the laws are proposed by the Government.

With time the EU Parliament has seen its powers increasing, and there is reason to expect it will continue to do so.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#145

Post by fanagra32 »

feeela wrote: post #125
maxilevi wrote: post #7

Why every 12 months the European Commission comes up with a total dumb and authoritarian proposal and we have to actively fight it? It’s just tiring

Because the European Commission is not a democratic institutionen! Those bureaucrats are mostly announced, not elected. And each European nation is only sending those politicians into the Commission, that are unwanted in national politics. In other words: The European Commission is the autocratic reservoir for conservative politicians that were to extremistic for national audiences.

If you really think that those guys are extremists, then you haven't seen nothing yet.

Take a peek over to Italian politics and you get a glimpse of what could be coming.

Or Israel.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#147

Post by peoplefromibiza »

whitemary wrote: post #46
cardosof wrote: post #11

If I lived in the EU I'd want to know who are proposing this kind of stuff and help with anything that gets them far from public and government -related jobs forever, but hey, that's me. Lots of people like to give up a bit of freedom and privacy in exchange for an increased sense of security.

You won't get very far. The EU is an anti-democratic organization.

if the EU is anti democratic, then there's no democracy on this planet.

Show me another place where 27 countries live peacefully together and jointly govern an entire sub continent, by collaborating together and discussing publicly about their political proposals.

Of course it has its problems, of course it takes a lot of effort to bring 27 countries together on a subject, of course there will be controversial opinions among its members, depending on the POV (a lot more people in EU agree with the chat control proposal than those who disagree), but that's the price of democracy.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#148

Post by gpderetta »

revelio wrote: post #114
Jensson wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of EU the member states would just leave if the union starts becoming too corrupt. Until they create a no-leave rule there isn't much to worry about. When they create a no-leave rule then we should start worry, since then EU is heading towards becoming USA.

Ah yes because we saw how easy it is to leave the EU for the UK even though it still has its own currency. Realistically current EU countries are locked in. They aren't allowed to reintroduce their own currency, but doing so is step one towards leaving.

Of course it is not easy, but if it feasible for questionable reasons as in the UK case, certainly it will be more feasible in case of existential threats.
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