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Not only was Chat Control 1.0 already rejected twice by the European Parliament but: - This vote took place on last day of the session when many MEPs had alrea

• GiorgioG 3mo ago
  So 112 MEPs didn't do their job...got it.
  • rowanG077 3mo ago
    Politicians can take vacations. Many things went wrong here but this ain't it.
    • Romanulus 3mo ago
      [dead]
    • mflaherty22 3mo ago
      Very reductionist comment- if you're an elected representative and you leave early to take a vacation knowing you'll be missing votes, you're not doing your job..
      • joe_mamba 3mo ago
        This. When I need to take my summer vacation, I need to request it to my manager in due time so the team can plan customer deliveries accordingly, and in my last day before leaving I need to do a handover of my open tasks to whoever will do the work in my absence. I can't just spontaneously decide one day that tomorrow I'm leaving for 2-4 weeks on vacation with no notice and no handover to my team. What's stopping MEPs from having to do that? Do they have literally zero responsibilities and accountabilities? Because their job is pretty critical for our society an security, even if a trained monkey could do it in theory.
        • deleted 3mo ago
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        • quantum_magpie 3mo ago
          Oh, so it's also your fault when you plan, and get approved a vacation, and then in the middle of it (lets's say on week 2 out of 4) you're notified that in two days you must be in the office, or, according to you, you should get canned?
          • hunter-gatherer 3mo ago
            I don't know... I'm not European so I don't really care, but I feel like there are some jobs that have an existing overlap of _duty_. I was in the military, and PTO was viewed as a privilege, and sometimes leave was cancelled, but that makes sense because of the position. Other civilian jobs, like firefighters, police, maybe some medical practitioners, might have this same thing. Politicians I would say is definitely one of those positions, where you should actually be in "public service". Officials in a democracy are supposed to be elected not because we need people to fill vacant jobs, but because we need people to be on duty to make the hard decisions. Basically, I don't think politicians should be held to the same standard as some SWE making note-taking apps.
            • blackqueeriroh 3mo ago
              This is a deeply American (and Puritan) view of work, and I can say that as an American who works in public service. PTO is not a “privilege.” In fact, it is a documented right as part of the employment agreement your company makes you, when you sign that document about the handbook. It should be a legal agreement, but somehow we’ve convinced people their purpose in life is to work for 50-60 years for 40+ hours a week and then have maybe 20 years to enjoy life before they die, happy to be of service to the people. Public servants deserve MORE time off and MORE money because they literally are ON CALL most of the time. Taking a vacation should be MORE Normal and votes shouldn’t require people to be in person. You build your government the way you build your country - you should show the utmost respect for those in public service by treating them right and respecting their time.
      • JumpCrisscross 3mo ago
        > knowing you'll be missing votes, you're not doing your job If you knowingly miss a vote, that’s part of the job. If your OOO gets played, that’s fucking up.
      • rowanG077 3mo ago
        They did not know this, this was an emergency vote literally injected two days ago.
      • mvdtnz 3mo ago
        Ever worked with Europeans? This is how they treat work. In their culture taking vacation and actually switching off is part of the job. I'm not making a value judgement but their approach to work is very different to what some of us are used to.
        • mikestorrent 3mo ago
          So they should prorogue the entire Parliament and they all take a month off together. Why the fuck should some particular province or riding or whatever miss out on representation on an important issue just because their rep is out for a week on an island somewhere? Could they not have a proxy / surrogate??
          • throw_await 3mo ago
            They are already doing that. There is an official summer break until September 02.
        • znort_ 3mo ago
          taking vacation and switching off is actually the sane thing for a person to do. the problem is that there is no provision for your post being covered while on vacation, and it's a problem in the enterprise/organization. imo that a representative of the people misses a vote should just not be acceptable under any circumstances. that's of course if we had to take "democracy" as an actually meaningful representation of the people. this was a cheap political maneuver to get a bill passed. happens everywhere. they would have gotten the bill through by any other means anyway. that would be in an ideal democracy, though, in reality european parlamentarians don't even draft laws, they are only able to sign off on laws drafted by shady appointees of an equally shady and largely unelected (by the people) comission, take it or leave it. that, photo ops and declarations is their whole job, it shouldn't be too complicated to have a fucking substitute when on vacation.
          • andsoitis 3mo ago
            I don’t consider these politicians typical employees. Do you think CEOs take vacation where they cannot be reached? If it does happen, it is a very rare exception.
      • tedggh 3mo ago
        Perhaps there should not be a vote while so many representatives are absent, unless it’s about a truly critical issue, like war.
    • alberto467 3mo ago
      Exactly. The issue is them being automatically in favor, that’s a really extreme measure I as an eu citizen did not know about, even though I’d say I’m probably more informed then the average and was made to study eu history, structure and laws in school. That kind of stuff is really weird, even weirder is that such an emergency measure can be activated without countries being in active war or the like.
      • joe_mamba 3mo ago
        >That kind of stuff is really weird, even weirder is that such an emergency measure can be activated without countries being in active war or the like. What's also just as weird is how the EU can just straight up sanction, debank and make European citizens virtually homeless overnight, without even a trial day in court. Absolutely insane. This is some NAZI/USSR shit, except you don't get executed, you just get deranked and made homeless and maybe die from that on the whims of some bureaucrat in another country. We gave the EU superpowers to "protect us" but never asked ourselves what happens when they use those powers against us when people vocally don't agree with their agenda.
        • buellerbueller 3mo ago
          [flagged]
          • joe_mamba 3mo ago
            Jacques Baud (Swiss) and Xavier Moreau (French) citizens, got sanctioned by the EU[1] on the basis of "acting as mouthpieces for pro-Russian propaganda and spreading conspiracy theories". Sanctioning means asset freezes, debanking and travel bans, virtually a slow and painful sentence to homelessness and death since you won't be able to travel, have a bank account, a job, own or rent anything under sanctions. I don't have a problem with them sanctioning people, I have a problem when it's not done by a judge but a snap decision done by bureaucrats without a public trial/hearing where the individuals get a chance to defend themselves for what they're accused of, especially when it's just for the act of speaking, even if we disagree with what they speak. Because otherwise the EU is no different than a monarchic or totalitarian dictatorship who has people executed for speaking bad things against it, and there's nothing stopping them from doing the same to you, me and everyone else here for wrong speak against the crown's interests. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L_202502568 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L...
    • paulddraper 3mo ago
      What is the out of session time for?
      • gmueckl 3mo ago
        For doing actual work? Getting in touch with constituents, listening to them, faction internal coordination, working on committee specific stuff, understanding proposals and motions of others, maybe filing their own... when taken seriously, this can be an intense job.
        • paulddraper 3mo ago
          Most of that list is done in session. This was just everyone leaving on a Friday, sort of a work day, sort of not.
    • bdelmas 3mo ago
      Or exactly as planned.
    • rendaw 3mo ago
      This is an absurdly bad take. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/9/plenary-sessions https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/9/plenary-session... > Plenary sessions of Parliament take place 12 times per year in Strasbourg and last four days There are 48 days in sessions over a year. You're saying that it's too much to ask MEPs not to take holidays during those 48 days? Am I missing something here?
      • deleted 3mo ago
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      • gmueckl 3mo ago
        Most of the work of an MP is not sitting in plenary sessions looking bored. The normally important bits are in-between - committee and office work. This specific event here is an example of a plenary session suddenly being made extremely important by a procedural trick.
        • xienze 3mo ago
          But it _was_ a plenary session, was it not? One of only 48? That someone could easily avoid scheduling a vacation during?
      • rowanG077 3mo ago
        Do you those 48 days are the total number of working hours these MEPs have? Of course not. Something always needs to give when going on vacation. And usually missing a a plenary session is not weird or the end of the world. The problem here is that in this case the rules were abused.
    • Towaway69 3mo ago
      The idea behind _representative_ democracy is that _we_ take holidays and our representatives do the work of upholding _our_ democratic values. These MEPs took their holidays before the parliamentary session was complete. If we're talking about _direct_ democracy then we have to do the work ourselves but because we don't want to do that (because we want to go on holydays), we give up our rights to those who _want_ to represent us. That, of course, falls apart once those representing us start to only represent themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_(Aristotle)#Book_III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_(Aristotle)#Book_III
• bko 3mo ago
  That's why you have a constitution with rights that are not up for vote. Even relying on people to vote no is not enough.
  • logicchains 3mo ago
    Some European countries like Germany do, but the EU somehow can override those national constitutions.
    • LtWorf 3mo ago
      It cannot. EU laws are completely useless and must be implemented by every government as a local law, which won't be more powerful than the constitution. The problem is that constitutional courts should then say the law was against the constitution and cancel it, but will that happen?
      • DiogenesKynikos 3mo ago
        In theory, it can't. But in reality, it does in important cases. Germany has implemented EU sanctions against a German journalist, which deprive him and his family of the ability to conduct basically any economic activity in Germany or even to leave the country. He is not allowed to work. No one is allowed to pay him money. He has to petition the government every time he wants to access even a small amount of the money in his own bank account. The same restrictions apply to his close family members, because they are suspected of helping him survive financially. He is barred from crossing any border in Europe, including to leave. He has not been accused or convicted of anything in court. The only procedure that was required to hand down an economic death sentence was for the EU Commission to put his name on a list. The German government claims this is all okay, because the journalist can proactively challenge his sanction listing in Brussels. It's a years-long process that will require paying lawyers - using money he is not allowed to access. Needless to say, this is all highly unconstitutional. But the German government simply doesn't care. They just say they're implementing EU sanctions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru
• maxloh 3mo ago
  I think that means those MEPs are not doing their jobs. They are the representatives of their people, but somehow they left for vacation before the last day of the session. They failed in the most important part of their duty.
  • Obscurity4340 3mo ago
    Its beyond political malpractice
  • mike_hearn 3mo ago
    Around ten years ago I watched some MEPs on YouTube talk about their jobs. A lot of them were scathing. The EP isn't a real parliament and the people in it don't have any real power, so it fills up with cheerleaders and hecklers. Attendance isn't just low before the summer break, it's low all the time. MEPs miss votes for reasons as trivial as there being a football game on, because why not? It's not like their votes matter much anyway. Everything important is decided upon long before they get involved, they aren't allowed to actually write laws or pass them or repeal them, and so nobody with any political ambition goes there unless they're using it as a springboard to national politics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=166SAhPB5-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=166SAhPB5-Q > "Mr President, our parliament in the United Kingdom sat for 142 days last year and it was criticized widely for only sitting for that amount of time yet we in Brussels and Strasburg in the plenary and mini plenary, we sit for just five days a month and on three of those days it's only part of a day that we actually sit for. So we end up with debate in this chamber where microphones of speakers are cut off after 60 seconds, 90 seconds or 2 minutes, and we have no way of expanding on a point, we have no way of properly challenging a speaker, we have no means of proper scrutiny of proposed legislation that comes through. Surely it would make more sense to have sufficient time allocated to proper debate to reason debate and those who actually believe in the structures and institutions of this place should surely welcome that. I think my 60 seconds is up." You can tell it's a joke institution because they regularly penalize MEPs for the content of their two minute speeches. Britain has the concept of parliamentary immunity but the EU does not, so you get "politicians" who are told what they can and cannot say by the leaders of other parties.
• trinsic2 3mo ago
  Sounds like an unlawful law to me, but hey. Im an American, what do I know.
• stingraycharles 3mo ago
  And then people wonder why there’s so little faith in the EU and why there is a perception of them being disconnected from the real interests of the people.
  • LtWorf 3mo ago
    Oh but they keep reposting how phones will have replaceable batteries now, so it's all fine, they are good guys! I've seen several posts with the photo of Ursula (one of the most hated politicians of all times) associated with the batteries thing.
• SV_BubbleTime 3mo ago
  > This vote took place on last day of the session when many MEPs had already left for Summer vacation Surely this was not by someone’s design. Maybe though… you don’t leave a day early for your vacation?