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This sort of argument is merely playing with words and has no intellectual merit. The EU's directives MUST be passed into law due to the treaties involved. A c

This sort of argument is merely playing with words and has no intellectual merit. The EU's directives MUST be passed into law due to the treaties involved. A country cannot simply refuse to implement directives it does not agree with, without also leaving the EU. Failure to obey the rules is met with fines and other forms of punishment. Whilst a handful of lawyers may pretend this is not a transfer of sovereignty, nobody else does, not even Juncker.

toyg 10y ago
> A country cannot simply refuse to implement directives it does not agree with As long as it can afford the resulting fines, it absolutely can. I believe this is what happened with milk quotas, which were widely criticised: a lot of countries kept paying fines until related directives were changed with more amenable rules. Talking of Italy, they've been floundering EU rules on TV markets for some 20 years, paying fines and eventually side-stepping the problem by changing technology. I wouldn't be surprised if they were still technically afoul of those rules. They've taken judgements and fines on the chin and just kept going, because local political classes had no will to basically hit Berlusconi's interests in that market. Good ol' Joseph Jughashvili would have said "how many armoured divisions does the EU Commission or Parliament control?", and he would have been right. Enforcement mechanisms in the EU are really weak; which is why the dominant culture in Bruxelles is about reaching consensus, all the time and with all sorts of horse-trading if necessary. Because what are you gonna do when a country gives you the finger, send in the police? There is no police. The military? There is no military. So, what are you actually "sovereign" on, if you have no way of imposing your sovereignty? Lawyers get a bad rep but sometimes they're actually pretty right.
vidarh 10y ago
The larger difference is that the member state is free refuse to implement the law and choose to leave - the directive can not be imposed. You may consider that just playing with words, but it makes the difference between being legal, and being a violation of constitutional law of a large number of member states, and as a result it makes a substantial difference in how the EU can be legally structured.
- Hermel 10y ago
  Are you saying the EU is basically a clever hack to get around constitutional restrictions?
  - xorcist 10y ago
    Not really. Countries have different juridical systems, with governing bodies based on completely different principles. UK law text would be gibberish in a German context, for example. (Or Chinese, or Brazilian.) So international law is made by treaties to be implemented nationally. An EU directive specifies certain limits but the corresponding law differ from country to country.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      If the EU had direct legislative powers, it would most likely be structured by letting it legislate EU law, not the national laws of the member states, the same was US federal law is interpreted under US federal law, not under the laws of individual states. We already have experience with this, in that the ECJ is already the highest court for matters of European Union legal matters, such as the interpretation of directives, and national courts in EU member states will often need to interpret cases in light of EU law.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    No, I'm saying that the current governing structure of the EU is a hack to get around constitutional restrictions. Everything the EU does can be done without these hacks (one alternative would be to negotiate acceptance of the directive as individual treaties), but the governing structure streamlines what would otherwise cause a whole lot more bureaucratic hassle by having created a legislative process which isn't really a legislative process, except that the member states have committed to taking the output (the Directives) and implementing them into law. This ensures that no legal delegation of sovereignty needs to be done, because national parliaments can choose to say no. There would be consequences, but they have the right to. It also, despite the many flaws in how it is done, delegates some of this decision-making authority to the EU Parliament, something which is only possible because they're involved in deciding on Directives, not laws, because there is no legal basis for them to legislate. Even so, this involvement is limited because there is also no legal basis for Parliament to exercise the executive powers of the member states that is used by to actually bind the member states under the relevant treaties. I don't think anyone (other than lawyers making money advising on it, perhaps) actually likes the current system. But it sort-of works, and the poblem with trying to reform it is that people dislike it for diametrically opposing reasons: Some wants a federation, some wants powers pulled back. So it's one of those compromise that makes everyone equally miserable.
tremon 10y ago
The EU's directives MUST be passed into law due to the treaties involved. A country cannot simply refuse to implement directives it does not agree with You're leaving out the part where every single nation has a veto on every single directive before it takes effect.
- sievebrain 10y ago
  Left out because it's not true. EU moved to qualified majority voting for the majority of issues years ago.

toyg 10y ago

> A country cannot simply refuse to implement directives it does not agree with As long as it can afford the resulting fines, it absolutely can. I believe this is what happened with milk quotas, which were widely criticised: a lot of countries kept paying fines until related directives were changed with more amenable rules. Talking of Italy, they've been floundering EU rules on TV markets for some 20 years, paying fines and eventually side-stepping the problem by changing technology. I wouldn't be surprised if they were still technically afoul of those rules. They've taken judgements and fines on the chin and just kept going, because local political classes had no will to basically hit Berlusconi's interests in that market. Good ol' Joseph Jughashvili would have said "how many armoured divisions does the EU Commission or Parliament control?", and he would have been right. Enforcement mechanisms in the EU are really weak; which is why the dominant culture in Bruxelles is about reaching consensus, all the time and with all sorts of horse-trading if necessary. Because what are you gonna do when a country gives you the finger, send in the police? There is no police. The military? There is no military. So, what are you actually "sovereign" on, if you have no way of imposing your sovereignty? Lawyers get a bad rep but sometimes they're actually pretty right.

vidarh 10y ago

The larger difference is that the member state is free refuse to implement the law and choose to leave - the directive can not be imposed. You may consider that just playing with words, but it makes the difference between being legal, and being a violation of constitutional law of a large number of member states, and as a result it makes a substantial difference in how the EU can be legally structured.

Hermel 10y ago
Are you saying the EU is basically a clever hack to get around constitutional restrictions?
- xorcist 10y ago
  Not really. Countries have different juridical systems, with governing bodies based on completely different principles. UK law text would be gibberish in a German context, for example. (Or Chinese, or Brazilian.) So international law is made by treaties to be implemented nationally. An EU directive specifies certain limits but the corresponding law differ from country to country.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    If the EU had direct legislative powers, it would most likely be structured by letting it legislate EU law, not the national laws of the member states, the same was US federal law is interpreted under US federal law, not under the laws of individual states. We already have experience with this, in that the ECJ is already the highest court for matters of European Union legal matters, such as the interpretation of directives, and national courts in EU member states will often need to interpret cases in light of EU law.
- vidarh 10y ago
  No, I'm saying that the current governing structure of the EU is a hack to get around constitutional restrictions. Everything the EU does can be done without these hacks (one alternative would be to negotiate acceptance of the directive as individual treaties), but the governing structure streamlines what would otherwise cause a whole lot more bureaucratic hassle by having created a legislative process which isn't really a legislative process, except that the member states have committed to taking the output (the Directives) and implementing them into law. This ensures that no legal delegation of sovereignty needs to be done, because national parliaments can choose to say no. There would be consequences, but they have the right to. It also, despite the many flaws in how it is done, delegates some of this decision-making authority to the EU Parliament, something which is only possible because they're involved in deciding on Directives, not laws, because there is no legal basis for them to legislate. Even so, this involvement is limited because there is also no legal basis for Parliament to exercise the executive powers of the member states that is used by to actually bind the member states under the relevant treaties. I don't think anyone (other than lawyers making money advising on it, perhaps) actually likes the current system. But it sort-of works, and the poblem with trying to reform it is that people dislike it for diametrically opposing reasons: Some wants a federation, some wants powers pulled back. So it's one of those compromise that makes everyone equally miserable.

tremon 10y ago

The EU's directives MUST be passed into law due to the treaties involved. A country cannot simply refuse to implement directives it does not agree with You're leaving out the part where every single nation has a veto on every single directive before it takes effect.

sievebrain 10y ago
Left out because it's not true. EU moved to qualified majority voting for the majority of issues years ago.