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The European Parliament has partially eroded net neutrality with its decision on the 27th October due to loopholes.

by corv 11y ago

kuschku 11y ago
No. The Parliament had written a version without loopholes. The Council then modified it, and said "If you don’t add these loopholes, we’ll veto it and all future variants of it". As the council is representatives of the governments of the nations, complain to your government, not to the EU.
- germanier 11y ago
  It's the same pattern as always: If the EU does something positive, then "your countries government worked really hard for that". If it's something people think critical of, blame the evil EU and deny your involvment. An often cited example in Germany is Regulation (EC) 244/2009 which bans classical light bulbs. Always blamed on the EU. What nobody tells you, is that it was proposed by then-minister for environment Gabriel and heavily lobbied for by chancellor Merkel. Doesn't stop one of them to use it as an example of over-regulation.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    And, as a German: EC 244/2009 led to lots of LED manufacturers trying to push their products and competing, leading to 8W 1200 Lumen warm-white LED light bulbs being available for less than 15€ by now everywhere. In my family, before the regulation we had several light bulbs and mercury-bulbs from IKEA which were expensive, but now we switched to these LEDs and have better light at lower cost. (At $0.40 per kWh German electricity prices make switching to LED make sense). Also many fun fair attraction owners switched to LED, and quickly discovered how having a programmable LED array is far better for flashy lights than few larger lights. -------------------- In general, though: Yes. It always happens. Same as in the refugee crisis, too. For the cost of building fences between all the EU countries that we did, we could have built a fence at the outer borders twice.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      The lightbulb situation is a mess. For some reason people insist on buying the banned incandescent ones (things slowly change because LEDs are getting cheaper), which led to them coming back into all shops as "industrial material, not for home use". Of course everyone buys them anyway, but now that producers don't need to conform to norms for home use, they start to fail deadly. My mother bought one recently (she didn't have time to get a proper energy-saving one from a home improvement store where she buys them bulk), and we had it literally explode at home, throwing glass shards all around the kitchen, when my brother tried to turn on the light.
    - jacobush 11y ago
      Fences: neatly ignoring that a lot of the countries not building fences don't actually WANT fences around the EU.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    And all the bullshit that UK's tabloids like to write, than then gets regurgitated by the regular press in the mainland. Things like "straightening bananas", "reclassifying snails as fish", "declaring juice to be a juice" - every time I actually went to check the actual regulations, they made absolute, perfect sense. But the press misrepresents it to mock the EU and thus general population believes EU is just bunch of idiot bureaucrats out to codify everything.
    - vvvv 11y ago
      I feel that this is such an important topic. The EU is an easy target for blame shifting, the opponents are so much more vocal and the union itself may be under threat in not too distant future. I think it needs better marketing and PR, and for us, individual pro-EU citizens to not allow our local politicians to divert attention from their incapabilities.
      - tormeh 11y ago
        Of course, the EU is much stronger than its PR suggests because of this: National leaders really like it, although semi-secretly, so when push comes to shove the EU is surprisingly resilient. It does feed the perception that the EU is undemocratic, though, which may be harmful over time.
- izacus 11y ago
  What exactly can my government (country population < 2 million) do when german telekom bribes their way through the council?
  - pas 11y ago
    Expose that corruption. Evidence, proof, sound recordings, and so on.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Well, push for the council to be replaced with a democratically elected representation? Only issue: that would mean each EU country would transfer its full sovereignty to the EU. The UK especially dislikes this.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Where can we see these two version of the legislation?
  - germanier 11y ago
    You can view the whole procedure on the EPs website: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=en&reference=2013/0309(OLP) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?...

The European Parliament has partially eroded net neutrality with its decision on the 27th October due to loopholes.

by corv 11y ago

The European Parliament has partially eroded net neutrality with its decision on the 27th October due to loopholes.

No. The Parliament had written a version without loopholes. The Council then modified it, and said "If you don’t add these loopholes, we’ll veto it and all future variants of it". As the council is representatives of the governments of the nations, complain to your government, not to the EU.

germanier 11y ago
It's the same pattern as always: If the EU does something positive, then "your countries government worked really hard for that". If it's something people think critical of, blame the evil EU and deny your involvment. An often cited example in Germany is Regulation (EC) 244/2009 which bans classical light bulbs. Always blamed on the EU. What nobody tells you, is that it was proposed by then-minister for environment Gabriel and heavily lobbied for by chancellor Merkel. Doesn't stop one of them to use it as an example of over-regulation.
- kuschku 11y ago
  And, as a German: EC 244/2009 led to lots of LED manufacturers trying to push their products and competing, leading to 8W 1200 Lumen warm-white LED light bulbs being available for less than 15€ by now everywhere. In my family, before the regulation we had several light bulbs and mercury-bulbs from IKEA which were expensive, but now we switched to these LEDs and have better light at lower cost. (At $0.40 per kWh German electricity prices make switching to LED make sense). Also many fun fair attraction owners switched to LED, and quickly discovered how having a programmable LED array is far better for flashy lights than few larger lights. -------------------- In general, though: Yes. It always happens. Same as in the refugee crisis, too. For the cost of building fences between all the EU countries that we did, we could have built a fence at the outer borders twice.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    The lightbulb situation is a mess. For some reason people insist on buying the banned incandescent ones (things slowly change because LEDs are getting cheaper), which led to them coming back into all shops as "industrial material, not for home use". Of course everyone buys them anyway, but now that producers don't need to conform to norms for home use, they start to fail deadly. My mother bought one recently (she didn't have time to get a proper energy-saving one from a home improvement store where she buys them bulk), and we had it literally explode at home, throwing glass shards all around the kitchen, when my brother tried to turn on the light.
  - jacobush 11y ago
    Fences: neatly ignoring that a lot of the countries not building fences don't actually WANT fences around the EU.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  And all the bullshit that UK's tabloids like to write, than then gets regurgitated by the regular press in the mainland. Things like "straightening bananas", "reclassifying snails as fish", "declaring juice to be a juice" - every time I actually went to check the actual regulations, they made absolute, perfect sense. But the press misrepresents it to mock the EU and thus general population believes EU is just bunch of idiot bureaucrats out to codify everything.
  - vvvv 11y ago
    I feel that this is such an important topic. The EU is an easy target for blame shifting, the opponents are so much more vocal and the union itself may be under threat in not too distant future. I think it needs better marketing and PR, and for us, individual pro-EU citizens to not allow our local politicians to divert attention from their incapabilities.
    - tormeh 11y ago
      Of course, the EU is much stronger than its PR suggests because of this: National leaders really like it, although semi-secretly, so when push comes to shove the EU is surprisingly resilient. It does feed the perception that the EU is undemocratic, though, which may be harmful over time.
izacus 11y ago
What exactly can my government (country population < 2 million) do when german telekom bribes their way through the council?
- pas 11y ago
  Expose that corruption. Evidence, proof, sound recordings, and so on.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Well, push for the council to be replaced with a democratically elected representation? Only issue: that would mean each EU country would transfer its full sovereignty to the EU. The UK especially dislikes this.
pbhjpbhj 11y ago
Where can we see these two version of the legislation?
- germanier 11y ago
  You can view the whole procedure on the EPs website: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=en&reference=2013/0309(OLP) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?...