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EU Integrity Watch
- dffg3 3y ago[flagged]
- dffg3 3y ago[flagged]
- dffg3 3y ago[flagged]
- sylware 3y agoHow are EU citizens going to prevent a politician favoring for the wrong reasons some big corps while mandated (by doing things... or carefully not doing anything...) and ending up, after his/her mandate, in some proxy of this big corp to be thanked "nicely" (from the bottom of big corp wallet). It is very important to draw a clear line between "right" and "wrong" reasons, because all policitians after their mandate will end up in a corp of some sort, as life is long road.
- pjmlp 3y agoUsually lobbing on this side of the pound is considered corruption, and even though there are several politicians that get away with it, there are also several others that have had to face the courts.
- sylware 3y agoIt can be very tough to detect: for instance Big Tech has bazillions of proxies or "friendly" companies/corps, and while "in power", they just have to do that: be careful that no significant and efficient regulation is setup (for instance noscript/basic (x)html portals for all "utility" online services, where reasonable). Not to mention: how do you legally "track" where politicians are going after their mandate? Do they have the obligation to publish their source of income or wealth after their mandate for a significant amount of (10+) years? And how to draw the lines between "right" and "wrong" in order to decide to seek justice. For instance in my country it seems a politician was involved in facilitating some russian gaz stuff, and with the war for ukraine, we all discovered he was a high level executive in a gazprom proxy. He had to leave because of the war, and it is only because of that that we found out. You can easily extrapolate that case to others, and most won't probably be detected unless there are people/orgs actively tracking them and their resources for a significant amount of time.
- nona 3y agoThe first three comments within the hour that this article was posted, were made by a 10-minutes old account and seem suspiciously like anti-EU astroturfing. Makes me hope or wish for a cross-website pseudonymous karma system, to at least rein in this kind of public opinion gaming. Back on-topic: this website seems to be a net positive, already it's challenging some of my preconceptions in that some EU member states are apparently more or less corrupt than I was expecting.
- dffg3 3y ago[flagged]
- paganel 3y agoI've been on this forum for 16 years, 17 years soon if God permits, I've just added an anti-European Commission comment somewhere else in this thread, hope that helps keeping score with who's saying what.
- arp242 3y agoPretty sure your comment wasn't what was intended, as it hadn't been posted yet. And let's not pretend the comments being referred to are reasonable. They're flagged and dead for a reason.
- sofixa 3y agoThis is amazing and very useful transparency. It's very easy and clear to see that e.g. Airbus are lobbying (not necessarily in the negative sense, there are information meetings with youth programmes) a lot; that there are lots of tenders with red flags (https://redflags.integritywatch.eu/ https://redflags.integritywatch.eu/) but most are just that there haven't been a lot of proposals.
- lynx23 3y agoWho watches the watchers?
- Y_Y 3y ago"quis custodiet ipsos custodies?" Whoever wants to?
- jongjong 3y agoThe amount of government corruption everywhere is unfathomable. They're essentially handing out billions worth of contracts to their friends... This crony-economy dominates every aspect of our lives as it's not possible for honest businesses to compete against businesses that are backed by easy government money. It's very much like slavery. The only significant difference is that instead of having two classes of people; slaves and masters, slavery is now a spectrum and is determined by how far you are from government money printers. It's absolutely disgusting. We are heading towards a reality worse than hell where those who are good, honest, hard working and generous are punished for the benefit of those who are wicked, dishonest, lazy and greedy... All while the real economy disintegrates and concentrates in fewer and fewer hands which makes the shrinking pool of 'the lucky few' increasingly delusional and out of touch. We need to abolish the monetary system NOW and abolish taxes. Government should be forced to operate on absolute minimal resources based on its own investments.
- dekken_ 3y ago[flagged]
- franga2000 3y agoThis is in no way unique to the government. The private sector operates on basically the same rules, but with even less oversight. CEOs meet up for golf and make a secret exclusivity deal, shareholders buy a company and then force their other companies to do business with it, a company buys the company it used to buy from so they get a better price than their competitors... At least when politicians do it, you can track it and at least try to do something about it. > All while the real economy disintegrates and concentrates in fewer and fewer hands Exactly! Even "the real economy" (by which I guess you mean the part of the private sector that doesn't take any government tenders and subsidies) is consolidating in the hands of a few unimaginably rich private organisations. This isn't a problem of governments, it's a problem of "free-market" capitalism. If you try to compete, they try to buy you out and if you refuse, they use their near-limitless pile of money to essentially buy your market share and drive you out of business.
- hcfman 3y agoI hate to be a cynic. But this organisation is funded by the people it is watching. There's another organisation called transparency.org, same situation. I tried to contact them about corruption in the past and they refused to get back to me, they just wouldn't respond to my calls (Answer phone) and refused to call me back. So much for this mission statements. The main purpose in my cynical view is to provide the appearance of transparency. Slightly less hidden, there's a Dutch organisation called "Veiligheidpercepties.nl". Here they are quite literally saying it's not about safety but the perception of safety. But okay, at least some document gather tasks will be performed etc. However, the most important thing, associating repercussions on corruption, that's extremely difficult. In the Netherlands it's essentially impossible for certain types of corruption. i.e. the important ones.
- hcfman 3y agoThey also have the King's commissioner in the Netherlands. I've read interviews with him and articles about him. They say he's like a watch dog against corruption in the province. I tried to arrange for a meeting with him to report some serious corruption. I they ignored me. I called every week for six weeks. Then I was told I'd get a response by mail. I did indeed get a response and from the King's commissioner. He responded that he didn't have the authority to do anything. He didn't even want to heard what it was that I had to report. Then why is every one reporting that he's a kind of watch dog on corruption in the province? Again, the existence of his role is simply to give the perception that his role is real and actually does something. People think the Netherlands is less corrupt because they have roles like that etc.
- arp242 3y agoWhat kind of corruption are we talking about?
- ClumsyPilot 3y agothats the poibt, the commissioner didnt even want to know what kind it is
- 3y ago
- paganel 3y ago> decisions made by politicians in the European Union I just want my life not to be controlled anymore by an unelected thingie such as the European Commission, as such, shifting the blame on provincial (because that's what they are by now, anyway) politicians is just very counter-productive. And then the powers that be will act surprised when they see that anti-EU sentiment is gaining ground (it's the Russians' fault, of course, if not them, the Chinese or the Iranians, never allow any political agency for people going against unelected supra-national entities such as the European Commission is).
- RandomLensman 3y agoIn quite a few European countries the government isn't directly elected - so "unelected" is a bit tricky here unless you are extending that to those national governments, too.
- paganel 3y agoOf course that I'm extending that to any unelected government/political entity whose decisions happen to affect people's lives on a national level (so I'm skipping the discussion about the unelected local "mayors"/leaders from some big European cities, even though a discussion should be had even there). Thing is that during the last 10 or 15 years (things seem to have accelerated after the latest big financial crisis) almost all consequential decisions taken at the national level have just been continuations of directives coming from Brussels, so even the politicians that happen to get elected at the national level are now just, I don't know what the best term would be, pawns? And this latest Next Generation EU madness has just made things worse, across the board, on account of "you'll be doing what you're told or no money for you!". Looking at Brexit from that perspective helps make better sense now, it was not all a "the poor toothless people have taken Britain out of the wonderful EU!" as the tertiary sector elites in South-East England made it out to look just after the fact, as Britain was one of the few political entities that could have disentangled from the whole mess while they still got the chance for that. Not sure how to judge of the results of it all, maybe it's too soon to call it, but there was reason behind the apparent madness.
- 433f 3y ago[dead]
- DeathArrow 3y agoSo people being watched are also the watchers?
- lnxg33k1 3y agoStill waiting for the correspondence related to Qatar from von der leyen
- hulitu 3y agoPfizer ?
- fragkakis 3y agoTBH I was expecting a timepiece made in EU