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Obviously, this is about creating the infrastructure for a continent-wide surveillance program, using children pornography as a troy horse. The problem is that

Obviously, this is about creating the infrastructure for a continent-wide surveillance program, using children pornography as a troy horse. The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing, at least until said European laws get implemented locally.

soco 2y ago
I'd call this a failure of the elected officials - elected just as the national ones yet feeling quite remote to their voters.
- denton-scratch 2y ago
  > I'd call this a failure of the elected officials You mean, the MEPs? There's very little that MEPs can do to hold the executive (the Commission) to account. Commissioners are appointed by national governments; each government gets a quota. The appointees are generally ex-ministers whose careers in national politics are over, due either to failure or disgrace. Essentially the only power that MEPs have is to vote down legislative proposals from the Commission. They have approximately no power to remedy administrative failures, corruption, and mistakes in implementation.
  - soco 2y ago
    Oh but lobby and communications and meeting the commissioners and and and. I don't hear any that all too often, but maybe it's on me?
mrtksn 2y ago
>The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing What is the base of this claim? There are EU elections this year FYI.
- elric 2y ago
  Those two statements are orthogonal. EU elections have little impact on EU institutions. The elections are only for the European Parliament. The European Commission, which controls the institutions and dictates policy, does not get elected by the populace. There is a lot of criticism (warranted, IMO) on this state of affairs.
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    Right, but the other EU officials are not Belgians or Germans or aliens from another dimension but people who are appointed by the elected governments in every country. As a result, these elections define part of the EU and the elections in every country defines the rest. In EU countries keep having strong sovereignty, it’s not like the USA. EU here acts more like an alignment institution among countries, it doesn’t actually have powers by itself and it appears that Europeans are still not ready to switch to a US-like system.
    - Detrytus 2y ago
      You have outdated info about how EU works. Since the Lisbon Treaty it is actually evolving towards single super-country, trying to strip member countries from their sovereignty (and mostly succeeding at that, unfortunately). EDIT: in a typical HN fashion people downvote simple statement of the fact, because they are in denial about the fact.
      - mrtksn 2y ago
        It’s a political process that will or will not happen to a point. Currency it’s not there yet, it’s quite far of it and honestly I don’t believe that it will happen before fixing the Eurozone and that’s a hard one.
      - p_l 2y ago
        This is exactly the argument that was used to defang reform of EU Parliament, which gave more power connected directly with voters, and kept the strong but non-transparent EU Commission as the only one with legislative initiative. Because it's easy to blame "Brussel bureaucrat" when it's hardly visible that said bureaucrat is minister and/or represantive from the party that is now campaigning against "brussel's edict".
rickdeckard 2y ago
> The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing That's largely because citizens of several countries accept the narrative of their local governing parties that the EU is some "external force" that is outside of anyone's control. Reality is that the EU is largely formed by members of local political parties sent to EU-institutions. They just send people there which they deem not useful for local campaigning or prefer to become "invisible" to local politics. Citizens should not accept this narrative, and instead demand more transparency on the activities of the local politicians sent to EU, holding the party accountable for their actions (or non-action) within the EU.
- techcode 2y ago
  This. It's been same before EU or other similar multiple country things. Back then some politicians were getting "promoted" into ambassadors of some faraway country, or decided to become university professors, if not flat out sent to "Goli Otok", "Siberia" ...etc. Since that mentality/way-of-doing politics has been around for a while - it will not be easy to get the political establishment to change.
- michaelt 2y ago
  Eh, partly. But it's also inherent in running an organisation with 24 official languages. Let's say you had really strong opinions on this, and you wanted to rally voters for a letter-writing campaign. Good luck coordinating the Spanish-speakers, the German-speakers and the Polish-speakers and so on. All of whom also have different TV networks, different newspapers, different radio, presumably different social media and so on. And politicians have the same problem - maybe you're an amazing public speaker. Maybe you've got the farming subsidy policy equivalent of the Gettysburg Address. Clear, succinct, witty, persuasive, honest, passionate - everyone who hears it will be fired up to support your vision. But if you can only deliver that speech in Portuguese? Good luck with that. Hell, look at this very discussion: I know first-hand about the complex relationship between the EU with the British parliament, press and electorate. But I have no idea what the equivalent situation is in the Czech Republic.
  - 2y ago
surgical_fire 2y ago
> The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states How exactly is it detached? The EU parliament is elected. The EU commission is composed of members appointed by each member state (and every member state is - or should be - a democracy, so the commissioner is s representative of an elected government). I keep seeing this bullshit being repeated as if it was true, and whenever I ask I never get meaningful answers.
- 3836293648 2y ago
  They're socially detached. Yes, people vote for them; no, people do absolutely not follow anything the EU does until it reaches national parliaments.
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    This socially qualifier completely changes the original meaning. One might argue that even national governments that are directly elected are socially detached from the general population. That is in my opinion a fault of society rather than fault of governments. If you don't care about politics, you are doomed to be ruled by those that do.
- aembleton 2y ago
  I don't even know what language the Wednesday morning meetings that the commission have are held in. The official minutes are in French; are they conducted in French? At least this was the case back in 2016 when I was doing as much research as I could before the referendum.
harywilke 2y ago
It still boggles my mind that it's not obvious how much of my tax bill go to the EU. This aids in the feeling of detachment.
- unilynx 2y ago
  With the EU having a total €150B budget in a €19.350B GDP economy it's probably still noise in your total taxes.
  - scoot 2y ago
    I can't help thinking that you must have the decimal point in the wrong place...
    - pasc1878 2y ago
      Or else they are European and use . as the thousands separator.
      - scoot 2y ago
        I wondered if that might be the case, but they're writing in English which use a comma as a thousands separator; in which case, they definitely have the decimal point in the wrong place, even if it's down to a grammatical error.
        pasc1878 2y ago
        I see many Europeans write in English but still use European number formatting - they are sort of different things.
        scoot 2y ago
        I'm not so sure they're separate, or at least that they should be treated as such. Either way, it's a shame that this isn't standardised, regardless of the language spoken. Likewise units of measurement (weight, distance, time etc.).

soco 2y ago

I'd call this a failure of the elected officials - elected just as the national ones yet feeling quite remote to their voters.

denton-scratch 2y ago
> I'd call this a failure of the elected officials You mean, the MEPs? There's very little that MEPs can do to hold the executive (the Commission) to account. Commissioners are appointed by national governments; each government gets a quota. The appointees are generally ex-ministers whose careers in national politics are over, due either to failure or disgrace. Essentially the only power that MEPs have is to vote down legislative proposals from the Commission. They have approximately no power to remedy administrative failures, corruption, and mistakes in implementation.
- soco 2y ago
  Oh but lobby and communications and meeting the commissioners and and and. I don't hear any that all too often, but maybe it's on me?

mrtksn 2y ago

>The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing What is the base of this claim? There are EU elections this year FYI.

elric 2y ago
Those two statements are orthogonal. EU elections have little impact on EU institutions. The elections are only for the European Parliament. The European Commission, which controls the institutions and dictates policy, does not get elected by the populace. There is a lot of criticism (warranted, IMO) on this state of affairs.
- mrtksn 2y ago
  Right, but the other EU officials are not Belgians or Germans or aliens from another dimension but people who are appointed by the elected governments in every country. As a result, these elections define part of the EU and the elections in every country defines the rest. In EU countries keep having strong sovereignty, it’s not like the USA. EU here acts more like an alignment institution among countries, it doesn’t actually have powers by itself and it appears that Europeans are still not ready to switch to a US-like system.
  - Detrytus 2y ago
    You have outdated info about how EU works. Since the Lisbon Treaty it is actually evolving towards single super-country, trying to strip member countries from their sovereignty (and mostly succeeding at that, unfortunately). EDIT: in a typical HN fashion people downvote simple statement of the fact, because they are in denial about the fact.
    - mrtksn 2y ago
      It’s a political process that will or will not happen to a point. Currency it’s not there yet, it’s quite far of it and honestly I don’t believe that it will happen before fixing the Eurozone and that’s a hard one.
    - p_l 2y ago
      This is exactly the argument that was used to defang reform of EU Parliament, which gave more power connected directly with voters, and kept the strong but non-transparent EU Commission as the only one with legislative initiative. Because it's easy to blame "Brussel bureaucrat" when it's hardly visible that said bureaucrat is minister and/or represantive from the party that is now campaigning against "brussel's edict".

rickdeckard 2y ago

> The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing That's largely because citizens of several countries accept the narrative of their local governing parties that the EU is some "external force" that is outside of anyone's control. Reality is that the EU is largely formed by members of local political parties sent to EU-institutions. They just send people there which they deem not useful for local campaigning or prefer to become "invisible" to local politics. Citizens should not accept this narrative, and instead demand more transparency on the activities of the local politicians sent to EU, holding the party accountable for their actions (or non-action) within the EU.

techcode 2y ago
This. It's been same before EU or other similar multiple country things. Back then some politicians were getting "promoted" into ambassadors of some faraway country, or decided to become university professors, if not flat out sent to "Goli Otok", "Siberia" ...etc. Since that mentality/way-of-doing politics has been around for a while - it will not be easy to get the political establishment to change.
michaelt 2y ago
Eh, partly. But it's also inherent in running an organisation with 24 official languages. Let's say you had really strong opinions on this, and you wanted to rally voters for a letter-writing campaign. Good luck coordinating the Spanish-speakers, the German-speakers and the Polish-speakers and so on. All of whom also have different TV networks, different newspapers, different radio, presumably different social media and so on. And politicians have the same problem - maybe you're an amazing public speaker. Maybe you've got the farming subsidy policy equivalent of the Gettysburg Address. Clear, succinct, witty, persuasive, honest, passionate - everyone who hears it will be fired up to support your vision. But if you can only deliver that speech in Portuguese? Good luck with that. Hell, look at this very discussion: I know first-hand about the complex relationship between the EU with the British parliament, press and electorate. But I have no idea what the equivalent situation is in the Czech Republic.
- 2y ago

surgical_fire 2y ago

> The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states How exactly is it detached? The EU parliament is elected. The EU commission is composed of members appointed by each member state (and every member state is - or should be - a democracy, so the commissioner is s representative of an elected government). I keep seeing this bullshit being repeated as if it was true, and whenever I ask I never get meaningful answers.

3836293648 2y ago
They're socially detached. Yes, people vote for them; no, people do absolutely not follow anything the EU does until it reaches national parliaments.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  This socially qualifier completely changes the original meaning. One might argue that even national governments that are directly elected are socially detached from the general population. That is in my opinion a fault of society rather than fault of governments. If you don't care about politics, you are doomed to be ruled by those that do.
aembleton 2y ago
I don't even know what language the Wednesday morning meetings that the commission have are held in. The official minutes are in French; are they conducted in French? At least this was the case back in 2016 when I was doing as much research as I could before the referendum.

harywilke 2y ago

It still boggles my mind that it's not obvious how much of my tax bill go to the EU. This aids in the feeling of detachment.

unilynx 2y ago
With the EU having a total €150B budget in a €19.350B GDP economy it's probably still noise in your total taxes.
- scoot 2y ago
  I can't help thinking that you must have the decimal point in the wrong place...
  - pasc1878 2y ago
    Or else they are European and use . as the thousands separator.
    - scoot 2y ago
      I wondered if that might be the case, but they're writing in English which use a comma as a thousands separator; in which case, they definitely have the decimal point in the wrong place, even if it's down to a grammatical error.
      - pasc1878 2y ago
        I see many Europeans write in English but still use European number formatting - they are sort of different things.
        scoot 2y ago
        I'm not so sure they're separate, or at least that they should be treated as such. Either way, it's a shame that this isn't standardised, regardless of the language spoken. Likewise units of measurement (weight, distance, time etc.).