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> Why is it that European governments seem to act in the interests of their citizens Note that this article is about the European Parliament, which indeed acts
by vog 9y ago
> Why is it that European governments seem to act in the interests of their citizens
Note that this article is about the European Parliament, which indeed acts very often in the interests of us, the European citizens.
However, that one is not the "European government". More precisely, it is only one part of it (depending on how strict you want to draw your analogy).
This is really a pity! There should be more power to the European Parliament.
On the other hand, if the European Parliament had more power, lobbyists would engage with it much more than they do now. So maybe it would then become as biased as all the national parliaments. However, I really hope that the European Parliament is able to retain its quality if it gets more power, which is why I'm a strong supporter of giving more power to the Parliament, and consequently taking power away from the Council and the Commission.
While we are at it: If you haven't already done so, you should go and become a regular supporter EDRi. It is one of the very few civil rights organizations that act on European level (not just national level). They achieve astonishingly much, given their low budget. Imagine what they could achieve with a real budget!
https://edri.org/ https://edri.org/
- gpvos 9y agoAccording to a comment[0] on earlier discussion[1], this legislative process was even initiated by the European Council and European Commission. I'm curious about more details about that, though. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14578358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14578358 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14577828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14577828
- vog 9y ago> this legislative process was even initiated by the European Council and European Commission This is no surpise. Note that the European Parliament is not allowed to initiate new laws, so any new law has to start at Council/Commission, almost by definition. (As I said: The European Parliament should get more power. Where else do you have a parliament with a missing right of law initiative? WTF?!) All they can do is trying to shape the law proposals by Council/Commission into a less hostile version. Sometimes they are even able to turn things around, but that works not very often.
- arethuza 9y agoYanis Varoufakis describes the structure of the EU as "We the governments" rather than "We the people".
- liotier 9y agoIndeed, the EU is currently a union of countries - that is the way it was designed: the founders were nationally attached. I would love to make it an actual country, but I am in a minority for now - most citizens of Europe still feel they belong to their nation before belonging to the union... I dream of that changing: when one has traveled a bit inside and outside of Europe, one realizes that national identities are irrelevant compared to what European nations have in common. But that would be a radical redesign of the EU.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoI'm sort of where you are in that I don't really feel like I'm a part of any nation, I'm just a human. I do feel Terran however (ie like I belong to Earth and vice-versa). So I feel European as much as British. As a subject of Her Brittanic Majesty however, I'm about to have that citizenship forcibly removed. The only other option appears to be to become a political refugee. Like if a third of people in your region voted and suddenly you were no longer to be a national of the country you were born in; it's weird.
- digi_owl 9y agoI can't help wonder if this is an age and class thing. Is one is younger and hold higher education, one can more freely move between nations. But if one is older, more settled with family and such, and perhaps has done industrial work for most of ones life, i suspect one see less benefits from EU. Heck, some of the directives may be seen as disrupting hard won job security.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoSeems like a reasonable hypothesis.
- k-mcgrady 9y agoThanks for the link to EDRi. I hadn't heard of them (although it looks like there is some affiliation with the UK Open Rights Group who I am aware of). Besides Privacy International, whom I'm also familiar with, are there any other non-profit's working in the privacy sphere within Europe that you know of? It's an area I'm interested in getting involved in in the future.