EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance
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The EU Council's approval of the "Chat Control" mandate has sparked heated debate, with many fearing it will lead to mass surveillance. As commenters dug into the implications, some advocated for decentralized, peer-to-peer alternatives like Tox or SimpleX, while others pointed out the challenges of getting non-technical users to adopt new, more secure platforms like Signal or Element. A surprising take emerged: some users actually prefer certain platforms, like Element, for their user-friendly desktop clients. Amidst the discussion, a consensus formed that the new mandate is still a threat, with one commenter noting that the revised wording is simply "sneakier" than the original proposal.
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It rewards or penalizes online services depending on whether they agree to carry out “voluntary” scanning, effectively making intrusive monitoring a business expectation rather than a legal requirement.
The (actual) solution should be to fix legislation to adequate protect privacy, because they'll attack this next.
But meantime, a technical solution is better than nothing.
0. https://tox.chat/
1. https://simplex.chat/
But some friction is to be expected.
SimpleX, and especially Tox, are much more mature. They're not newcomers.
They are only lacking in users, as they don't have the marketing resources companies like Slack or Discord do.
If a P2P solution that solved the aforementioned Signal issues were to have excellent UX, then that could probably work.
Lastly, what counts as "excellent UX" for technical and non-technical people seems to differ. For example, I consider Discord and Slack to be quite intuitive and easy to use, but multiple technical people have expressed to me that they find it to be very confusing and that they prefer other solutions, such as GroupMe in one example. To me, GroupMe shoving the SMS paradigm into something that's fundamentally not SMS is more confusing and poor UX, but to these non-technical people that seems easy. I suspect that Signal's shortcomings that I perceive are an example of this: making UX trade-offs that work great for non-technical people but are less good for technical people. I'm not sure what these specific UX trade-offs are, but I suspect that it's something akin to having a conceptually sound underlying model (like Discord or Slack servers/workspaces and channels), versus having really obvious "CLICK HERE TO NOT FUSS" buttons like GroupMe, while having graceful failures for non-technical users that can't even figure that out (like just pretending to be SMS in GroupMe's case if you can't figure out how to install an app, or don't want to put that effort in, something that many people know how to use).
But people like to sensationalize stuff
This is less worse than the original proposal
Oh and honestly game chat rooms should not be private.
(of course personal 1:1 messages should)
Services are obligated to do risk analysis and take appropriate safety precautions against high risk actions. High risk actions include "anonymous accounts", "uploading media", and of course "encrypted messages".
The moment they catch the next random pedo, every messenger app on their phone will be tasked with explaining why they didn't do enough to stop the pedo. They'd better get their business together next time, because otherwise they might be held liable!
There's no law that says you have to hand over arbitrary data to the police without a warrant but when Telegrams shady owner landed in france, he was locked up until his company pledged to "work together with police better".
Don't be fooled by pretty words, none of this optional stuff is optional for any messenger the government doesn't already have the ability to read along with.
Technical gotchas are not the same as legal gotchas
OP is not reading too much into this. You are being naive if you think that this is not the intended goal of this law.
Everyone who has looked at this proposal know that the 'changes" made to the latest draft are not real changes and that voluntary scanning with repercussions is the same exact thing as mandatory.
If a robber walks into your house and ask you to give all your cash and threatens to break your legs if you don't do it, did you give your money voluntarily or was it forced by the threat of violence?
Either something is mandatory and if not done, should be punished accordingly or something is voluntary in which case, then if someone does not do it there are no repercussions.
You can't say that something is voluntary and but that there would be repercussions if that thing is not done. It does not make sense.
Yet that is exactly what this law says. High risk companies should prevent the spread of CSAM but they are not forced to do it, except that if they don't do it then bad things will happen to them but don't worry it's not mandatory.
Those are just weasel words by politicians. Nothing more.
And what my undersensationalized friend do you understand by the word chat?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
> While some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true if the heating is sufficiently gradual, according to modern biologists the premise is false: changing location is a natural thermoregulation strategy for frogs and other ectotherms, and is necessary for survival in the wild. A frog that is gradually heated will jump out. Furthermore, a frog placed into already boiling water will die immediately, not jump out.
But of course some HN commenter had to do: 'well actually...'. :D If I would write something like: 'Better late than never' would you be correcting me too? 'Well actually studies shows that it is better never...'
I recommend some chilling with a nice cup of tea.
The legal mandate was shot down by the EU courts, but every country then figured out their own loophole and as a result data retention is effectively mandatory but not by clear and public law.
Nobody wants this, including they themselves, which is why they specifically exempt themselves from it.
The question is more why do the shit politicians rise to the top. Outside forces (rich people and companies) have too much power and can exert too much influence.
In this case I’m particularly curious about the Danes. They insisted on this more than any other previous attempt. They are forever soiled as fighting against the will of the people.
It's been sold as "for the children". A very substantial proportion of the population are natural authoritarians, and this is red meat for them. Never mind that "the children" that they profess to be protecting are going to grow up living in an increasingly authoritarian surveillance state, this is what authoritarians want for our future, and they see it as not only morally good, but any opposition to it as indefensible.
Dumb and greedy voters, traditional and social media, and electoral interference are known reasons. But it's also a matter of compromise: you vote for a party because you agree with a bunch of their points, but almost certainly not all. Topics like privacy are ignored by the general public, so politicians are hardly held accountable for them.
As for why politicians turn out this way, they're just pretty ordinary people (often quite impressive people actually, relative to the norm). Most people don't get an opportunity to show off how useless their political principles are because they have no power or influence. That's why there is always a background refrain of "please stop concentrating power to the politicians it ends badly".
So that you can blame them for your problems.
Whoever wins the bid for the (visually hashed) child porn database Whatsapp uses is bound to receive billions of API calls the month the contract goes live. They won't make whatsapp pay for that directly, of course, but I'm sure they'll be "covering operating costs" with government grants to "protect" the public. They get to be rich claiming everyone is a paedophile yet to be caught while pronouncing themselves the foremost fighters against child abuse.
its more likely than it has been in a very long time with multiple smaller parties gaining seats. Nationalists in Scotland and Wales have been around a whole, and NI always had its own parties, but on top of that we now have Reform and the Greens making gains.
I'm not sure how you can have already forgotten the fact that we have to upload or face or ID to access websites.
In 2029 it's likely we'll have a more libertarian government:
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/...
Reform will repeal some of the awful legislation that's been passed over the last few years (e.g. Online Safety Act). They've been loud critics of government overreach.
https://www.ft.com/content/886ee83a-02ab-48b6-b557-857a38f30...
As long as you are white British. If you're anything else you're probably going to be worse off under Farage.
It's a shame that if you want to vote for someone with different policies to the two main parties, you have to accept that you are also voting for an outspoken racist.
Non-EU net migration has fallen sharply too.
It proves what was always obvious to anyone who looked at it, that high net immigration was temporary, especially the peak post covid and the special scheme for Ukrainians.
And note also that the UK and EU share high-quality education systems, Western Judeo-Christian culture and Western-aligned geopolitics.
Recent waves of immigration from countries in the Middle East and North Africa are importing wholly different culture, geopolitics, and crucially, we are importing from countries with measurably lower standard of literacy and numeracy.
These are objective facts, and they are not criticisms or judgements on the character of those who are migrating.
I would make exactly the same choices as our Pakistani, Somali and Eritrean friends, if I were in their position.
I honestly think that if politicians had blocked this (reform style) in 2000, the resulting economic slowdown and increasing cost for labor intensive products would've seen them voted out in short order.
I do agree that negative consequences of the approach were played down/underestimated/neglected, but painting it as pure uncaring negative is just disingenuous.
Just look at how Brexit alone affected lorry driver wages; if you cut immigration 25 years ago, you'd have seen the same effect across multiple sectors magnifying each other (because labor supply is simply insufficient), and there is a lot of people that would have suffered from higher costs in all those sectors without getting any compensation.
As a "sanity check" for this: If the UK economy did not "need" immigrant labor, you would expect significant unemployment and very high difficulty in finding unskilled labor jobs. Neither is the case.
Reform policy is being drawn up by a team that’s led by a British Pakistani : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zia_Yusuf
Ordinarily we might give him the benefit of the doubt: maybe he's matured and grown up since then. But the fact that he's called all of those classmates liars says that either they are all liars, or he is dishonest about his racism.
The things said were truly disgusting.
I wouldn’t presume to speak for the Jewish community, but I would expect that they feel less threatened by something a child said in a playground during the 1970s, but rather the rampant antisemitism that has risen in our society, spearheaded by the toxic alliance of the hard left and the Islamists. Those are the ones who are assaulting Jewish people on the streets and hanging around Synagogues to “demonstrate”, or rather to intimidate them.
You seem to be confused. The Libertarian Party never gets any power. The closest we get is representatives like Ron Paul, Justin Amash, and Thomas Massie, who run as Republicans (which are NOT the party of small government, despite what you may have been told) while acting much more like Libertarians.
Thomas Massie in particular is famous for frequently and routinely standing up against Trump, much to Trump's chagrin.
I believe that's the point.
The Republican Party *pretends* to be "small government", but isn't.
Haha you're so funny.
If Reform get from, what is it right now, five -- or four, or six, depending on how the wind blows — MPs to 326 MPs, which is enough to secure the majority they think they are getting, then libertarian is not what that government will be.
It will be populist, white and significantly authoritarian, because pure tabloid authoritarian thuggery is the only possible strategy that could cause a swing larger than any in history, against two parties (labour and liberal democrat) who currently hold 472 seats and represent a sort of centrist blob between them.
And this is to say nothing of the challenge they will face finding 326 non-crazy, credible candidates for 326 very different parliamentary elections. And to say nothing of the foreign influence scandal that currently engulfs senior Reform figures or the catastrophic issues already affecting Reform councils like Kent. Do you think Reform could succeed without Farage? And do you think Farage's reputation is going to somehow be improved by the Nathan Gill situation?
I accept they will be the largest minority. But the parliamentary maths to get to an outright majority is really extreme; the system does not support such things easily.
Maybe they will get to largest minority and then campaign for PR/AV/STV, and maybe finally people will understand something like it is needed. But Farage will be a lot older in that election.
(It surprises me to see people who are so keen to believe that a council election wave is necessarily predictive of a national election wave because, what, somehow everything is different now? Why is it different?)
How can you be so sure? Why do you assume that everything that the Reform chairman, Zia Yusuf (head of policy) is lies? What, from his history, suggests that he is a liar?
> catastrophic issues already affecting Reform councils like Kent.
A small number of councillors left, but KCC is still a strong Reform majority. Councillors come and go throughout the year (just look at the constant stream of council by-elections), so to call Kent a "catastrophe" is hyperbole.
> It will be populist, white and significantly authoritarian
Populist yes. But I've never understood why popular polices get such a bad rep in a supposed democracy?
White? So what? Although it's rapidly changing thanks to Tory/Labour policies, the UK remains a majority white country. Why is politicians' skin colour an issue in your mind?
"Significantly authoritarian" how? Can you name an "authoritarian" policy in Reform's last manifesto?
> Do you think Reform could succeed without Farage?
Yes. Zia Yusuf is an extraordinary man, and my money would be on him becoming the leader when Farage inevitably steps down. And your concerns about white politicians will hopefully be soothed when a second-generation Sri Lankan is our Reform prime minister.
https://www.youtube.com/@ZiaYusufOfficial
> the parliamentary maths to get to an outright majority is really extreme; the system does not support such things easily.
For that to happen, you need a strong i.e. 30%+ share, and you need numerous opposing parties with similar policies, and all polling at similar levels. That's EXACTLY what's happening, and the electoral calculus puts Reform on a strong majority (low = 325, high = 426)
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/...
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html
Because they are extremely short shortsighted and a wreck in a long term.
Would you say that was "extremely short shortsighted and a wreck in a long term."?
In the context of its time it was a fairly pragmatic, top-down central-government post-war-socialism project. It appears more radical in retrospect, but viewed in the light of decisions in the war effort and the post-war effort, and in a country that still had mandatory rationing for example, the NHS was a solid decision that was actually pretty evidence-based.
There are few people alive now who can tell you what the foundation of the NHS was like in terms of their professional career, but my dad did tell me about that.
In no way would that have been considered "populist"; the UK was severely negative about populists at that time, for one thing. It actually made solid logical/technocratic sense. It definitely came as a huge relief, but in many ways it formalised the resource-sharing schemes in place in various regions, especially London.
I am not sure you understand what populism is, along with not understanding that securing a number of seats is not something that logically follows from projections of numbers of seats, particularly in the context of an entirely new party with divisive leadership. We don't have PR, so aggregate data like that is not easily interpreted, and council election data is not that strongly indicative.
Also pretty interesting to hear someone who is so pro-Reform so confidently talking up the NHS, considering the long-standing positions of many UKIP/Brexit Party/Reform people that it should be privatised. Free at the point of use healthcare is under threat from Reform in a way that no other political party in the UK would risk, as a consequence of that. Presumably you think we should still have an NHS but the state shouldn't own it. Given the international figures who gather around Reform and the hard right in this country, there is no way the NHS would survive Reform intact.
I don't know an exact definition of a populism but for me it's when political messages are designed to trigger strong emotions, ignore complexity, promise simple solutions to hard problems. All politicians to some extent lie, over-promise and under-deliver but populists tent to take this on a next level.
Right populists tend to promise tax cuts (which unsurprisingly benefit their sponsors the most) and to balance budget they either increase debt or undermine public services (which is bad in a long term). Left populists promise to tax the rich ignoring that it's can be bad for economic growth and taxing alone would not give enough revenue to significantly benefit poor/middle classes.
In the UK, is it all about media ownership or something?
GBNews launched in 2021 with a strong anti-establishment mandate. The growth in its audience surprised everyone, surpassing both BBC News and Sky in viewership. For four consecutive months (July-October 2025) GBNews has been Britain's number one news channel (Source: BARB).
Crucially it also has 2.5bn views on YouTube since launch.
The establishment try to write off and condescend GBNews, but in doing so they condescend the large and growing section of the UK public that GBNews represents (e.g. for example - people on both the Left and Right who are frustrated with 110,000 undocumented migrants entering the UK over the last three years, many of whom have been put up in hotels at taxpayer expense).
As the elite condescend and push away large swathes of the population, they are creating increasing loyalty toward GBNews, and by extension, the Reform Party.
Yes.
Can't see the Tories bouncing back in a few mere years. Labour are heading rapidly into the same unelectable territory.
Which leaves us with Reform vs a Green-LibDem coalition?
But the Greens have chosen to embrace their own form of populist lunacy. And some will never forgive the Lib Dems for their last coalition.
Well, populist lunacy is how Reform got so popular, so I can see why it would be tempting for the Green party.
Main thing that's weird right now with the UK is that because it's first-past-the-post and the current polling is Reform:~29%, Lib/Lab/Con/Green:~16%, I would not be surprised by any of these parties forming a minority government nor any one of them getting a massive parliamentary majority.
That said I will find it very very funny if the Conservative party ends up last from that list.
Removing the 2 child benefit cap? Increasing NHS spending? Returning to New Labour levels of net immigration, being a country with borders?
> That said I will find it very very funny if the Conservative party ends up last from that list.
At least we agree on that. The Tories deserve to be confined to the dustbin of history.
Also the small possibility of being a Russian asset of course.
You mean replacing it with renewable five year visas that have reasonable salary thresholds and English language criteria, and which still allow the holder to apply for citizenship?
Why is that lunacy?
ILR is the immigration equivalent of "squatters' rights" - completely immoral IMO.
> the small possibility of being a Russian asset of course
The Left tried that with Trump too. It didn't work out for them, and I doubt this tactic will damage Farage either. It smacks of desperation IMO, just like all the silly childhood racism heresay.
Immigration is always a funny one for the UK especially, given how people tend to look at gross numbers instead of which sectors the immigrants work in, and the discourse about why locals demonstrably do not fill those roles is mostly just insisting that locals can no matter what current unemployment levels actually are. Before I left the UK, the stereotype was all the Poles moving to the UK and building houses: UK should have invited over more builders, then there wouldn't be a shortage of houses.
Immigration is a shared bit of populist lunacy Reform have in common with the Conservatives and Labour: promises to be tough on immigration, then they get power and look at what the consequences would be of doing that, and put all the blame on asylum seekers* that are banned from working and therefore safe to kick out no matter how at risk they are in their countries of origin.
* https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-whilst-an...
* £10bn+ per year - Adjusting how the Bank of England (BoE) treats reserves — e.g. stopping interest payments to commercial banks that receive money under quantitative easing (QE)
* £11bn+ per year - Rolling back expensive "net zero" policies
* £9bn+ per year - Alter eligibility for welfare
* £25bn - Scrap HS2
* multiple billions - Reducing foreign aid budget and cost of housing illegal migrants.
It's likely that pro-growth Reform policies such as lowering corporation tax to make the UK more competitive will significantly increase the corporation tax take - as was shown when the Tories entered power in 2010, lowered the corp tax rate and corp tax revenue increased significantly. In general, Reform's tax cuts are aimed at increasing the tax base.
These in particular are fictional. That's an obsolete (due to tech improvements) estimate of the private sector costs.
At this point, with the tech now available, almost everyone gets rich by doing net zero, almost nobody saves money by abandoning it.
> * £9bn+ per year - Alter eligibility for welfare
"Welfare" includes e.g. the child benefit cap. You can save a lot by spending less. Do you want to spend less? OK, fine. But that's the cost: a majority have to agree who gets to be the next scapegoat, and the child benefit cap was itself introduced back when parents with too many kids were the scapegoat.
> * £25bn - Scrap HS2
Scrapping a one off payment to save money in the short term, at the cost of worsening long-term economic benefits by failing to improve national logistics.
> housing illegal migrants.
Do you mean asylum seekers? Reason I ask is that people who are actually in the UK illegally (which is different), don't cost "billions". Asylum seekers are housed because they're banned from working, theory is that if they work they might stay, IMO this is BS and everyone would benefit if they were allowed to get jobs and look after themselves.
Even without that there absolutely are savings to be made on the cost of asylum seekers (who are not "illegal migrants"). They're looked after at a total cost of about £100/person/day, and obviously they could be looked after at about half that (or less) given what UK incomes are. But that's a whole one billion per year you might save.
> It's likely that pro-growth Reform policies such as lowering corporation tax to make the UK more competitive will significantly increase the corporation tax take - as was shown when the Tories entered power in 2010, lowered the corp tax rate and corp tax revenue increased significantly. In general, Reform's tax cuts are aimed at increasing the tax base.
Even with the best will in the world, this kind of thing is unlikely to make a dent in comparison to the core Reform policy of hating their nearest and biggest market. Brexit (and consider who owns Reform) has cost the economy an estimated 6-8% GDP by this point, per year, in lost growth opportunities — around £200bn/year.
The biggest thing any government could do to increase the tax base is to get a bigger workforce to tax. Which means more immigrants, which is why Lab and Con don't ever do anything about immigrant workers despite saying so. This was also one of the benefits of the UK being in the EU, in that all of labour, capital, and goods could move around more freely to meet business opportunities, help with growth.
A lot of politicians change when they get in power.
Ofcom (the communications regulator charged with imposing the censorship laws) literally maintains a public list of non-compliant websites that anyone who doesn't want to give their ID to a shady offshore firm can browse for example.
can't browse?
The "proposal" was made something like 3 years ago, the killing never happened and the passing, if it passes, will happen in at least one year from now because this will definitely take a long time to get through parliament and even longer to get through the trilogue.
The process is many things but quick it is not
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/
[2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-a-new...
The attention span of the general public _shouldn't_ matter. That's why we elect politicians.
If legislative processes are so drawn out and complex that no more than a handful of ordinary citizens could keep track of them, the advantage that paid lobbyists have over the public is enormous
No matter who's in charge, no matter the election results, no matter the protests - the same style of legislation is pushed.
and once something's in it is almost impossible to remove.
It would work if we could elect politicians who were both competent and trustworthy.
Of course that would require successfully electing people who are competent about a broad range of issues, able to see through well funded and clever lobbying, unblinded by ideology, and able to resist pressure.
The democratic process needs a revamp but it shouldn’t be driven by the general populations attention span.
Where's your "factual basis" for such assertions?
> Regarding your specific point about using recent context to inform political opinions, if you spend any amount of time listening to the opinions of people online you'll find that not only do they fail to accurately recall past events, but they don't bother to research what actually happened, and when they do they fail at anything but the most superficial political analysis.
1) People regularly online are a rather specific group 2) People sharing their opinions online are a very specific group 3) Basing your views on society at large based on opinions of those groups is a risky strategy, especially given how easy it has become to spread propaganda online
Anyway as for my optimism, it's based on actually interacting with people directly. Having discussions with them. Talking to them about what they believe, and why. They're usually a lot more complex and intelligent than those various descriptors used above.
(a) limited in number due to the nature of your interaction with them
(b) will express themselves differently, due to the nature of interaction. (Just like people expressing themselves online act differently.)
(c) are probably also a very specific group or bubble, which is simply the people you get to interact with. Which _might_ be more varied than the other person online, but might also be less varied. Really depends on how you pick the people you interact with.
(d) Anecdote of one person N=1 is not really a good factual basis for other people.
So if you want to show how your view is more based on evidence, then you will have to do better than anecdote and no links to statistics or cases we can peruse.
It's harder to ask, "Why are people still voting for this despite it seemingly being against their interests"
But once you do start asking that question, you'll find "they're just stupid" isn't really the only answer. At least 1 other answer would be they're responding to politics of other parties failing them too.
Is it the most rational decision for those people? No, probably not, but ignoring their motivations and chalking it up to stupidity or whatnot is really not going to solve anything - and, in fact, is only going to push those people further into what they believe. You should consider whether that's what you want.
As to why they still vote like they do:
(1) Because every 4 years the mainstream party promise to solve some problems, netting votes of the young, gullible, or inexperienced voters.
(2) Promise pension increase, netting votes of the ever increasing amount of old people, most who don't care about who or what comes after them.
(3) People are too busy, burned out, or lazy (we still have it too good here, it seems), and cannot be arsed to inform themselves before elections. We also have tons of people, who are truly learning-resistant, right out of school or "university".
(4) People think, that SPD, CDU, Greens, etc. are the only way to stop AfD.
I think we are not very high on the democratic-ability scale. Yes, we vote every 4 years, but it is more like collectively we don't really care enough to inform ourselves properly and just check a few boxes, because we want to tell ourselves, that at least we did vote and that we are fine democratic citizen.
And look, I myself am not frequently reading all parties' positions. And I myself inform myself more shortly before an election, rather than all the time. But I do have a feeling for corruption and I don't always forget scandals that happen, when the next engagement-optimized news headline comes in. I still remember Rezo's "Zerstoerung der CDU" video. I remember reading those abgeordnetenwatch newsletters about the lobby register. Or the foodwatch newsletters about Kloeckner and the Lebensmittelampel. That's why I will not vote for mainstream-promise-a-lot-but-no-delivery parties and retired people clubs. And what more I do, is to use the Wahlomat, and actually check which party's position aligns most with my own.
I don't do too much either, but most people do way less to inform themselves. They just check a box out of habit. Why they vote for CDU/SPD? Because that's what they always did. It's real friggin dumb.
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Or the commissioners that are appointed by the democratically elected heads of the member state governments?
The head of the EU, who was nominated by the Austrian Government (and the other 26 governments) and elected by the MEPs in parliament (who were directly elected) decided on his portfolio.
Compare this to the US system, where the head of the US executive is elected by electors who themselves are directly elected. That head then appoints whoever they want.
If you were to make the US reflect the EU, you would have
1) Senate nominates the president (one vote per state)
2) Congress votes for the president
3) Senate provides the people to be secretaries
4) President selects from that list and chooses which person gets head of State, head of Treasury, etc
This would give more power to the states and less to the federal level, which itself is something many in the US want. Doesn't make it undemocratic.
Appointed, so, not elected. Thanks for answering.
You will never get an answer from them. But we should keep asking it anyway.
I always wondered if they live on the EU and are genuinely too stupid to understand how the bloc their country joined works or, most likely, live outside of it and the idea of the EU as a political entity offends their sensibilities or heighten their anxiety.
Hmm, now whose fault is it that the EU institutions are so complicated and opaque? The citizens? The journalists? Or maybe...?
And in a democracy if you don't know how your own laws are made the fault is always yours as a voter
You are aware that those with power to initiate legislation are appointed by national governments right?
If you are unhappy with how your country posed itself in those propositions, you can and should vote for parties that have different stances.
In the UK with a Parliamentary democracy, unpopular policy ideas can be abandoned. Manifestos are not always adhered to, but they typically include ideas that their canvassers can sell on the doorstep and there is robust media criticism when they abandon their promises. We have a strong history of U turns because our politicians are wary of unpopularity. The most recent big backlash was the Winter Fuel Allowance cut which was proposed by the two parties (with the Treasury pushing for it behind the scenes) and abandoned by both due to deep unpopularity in the Country. Even the budget this week had a run-up where various fiscal changes were unofficially floated through the media, to see which ones had the smallest backlash.
This is completely different to the EU, where the Commission and Council arguably get what they want even if it takes several attempts.
Those are not Lovecraftian entities that came from undersea. Their members are appointed from the national governments. If you dislike how your country position itself on those organs, this should change your view on how the ruling parties in your country took decisions at the EU level.
But my point elsewhere in this thread is that we have the ability for future governments to overturn unpopular legislation, something that is not unusual at all in the UK.
Consider it read/write versus write-only in the EU, which doesn’t give a damn about unpopularity.
As for council or commission, I presume you can elect different national governments from time to time? I mean, unless you are in Hungary.
Completely immune is overstating it, and the power to initiate legislation is not that meaningful given that the EC initiates what the council tells it to initiate and can't actually turn it into law without parliament and council
Nobody's attention span is infinite. I don't doubt I could understand all details of the EU legislative process and keep track of what sort of terrible proposals are underway if I put in the time, but I have a day job, hobbies that are frankly more interesting, and enough national legislation to keep track of.
If you then also say that the outcome is still my responsibility as a voter, then it seems like the logical solution is that I should vote for whatever leave/obstruct-the-EU option is on the menu. I don't understand why I am obliged to surrender either a large and ever-growing slice of my attention or my one-over-400something-million share of sovereignty.
Because your puny state is no match for the US, China or soon enough, India. Heck, even Russia in its current incarnation outmatches 80% of the EU countries.
That's it, it's that simple, conceptually.
It's basically the Articles of Confederation vs the Constitution of the United States.
Yes, it's not a pretty process, but the alternative is worse.
We can all live in La-La-Land and pretend we're hobbits living in the Shire ("Keep your nose out of trouble and no trouble will come to you") until reality comes crashing down.
Then proposals maybe turn into laws, through a complex process. We are HERE.
A good government doesn't have many with abhorrent LAWS.
They are not. People just don't bother themselves to spend half a calory in brain power to read even the Wikipedia page about it, and just repeat shit they read in forum posts.
I mean, here on HN, a website where people are supposedly slightly above average in terms of being able to read shit, the amount of times I read how EU is "bureacrats in Brussels" "pushing hard for changes" is weird.
The problem is mostly the sheer amount of things going on, you couldn't possibly keep up with it all.
[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/
[2] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/document/en/163352
If EU is a trade union this is a severe overreach, if EU wants to be a federation, there's not enough checks and balances. This is the crux of the problem.
The issue is that this is a legislation that only ones in power want(censorship on communications channel where they themselves are exempt from it), that has been pushed over and over again under different names(it goes so far back - it started with ACTA talks and extreme surveillance proposals to fight copyright violations) and details in implementation and/or excuse(this time we get classic "think of the children")
Your problem is with the leadership of countries, not with the EU as an institution. I agree that it is a problem btw, but I think you got the wrong culprit. This isn't pushed on the states by the EU, this is the states using the EU to push it and launder the bad publicity.
[1] In fact, we have helpfully seen this play out with our friendly early exiter. The remarkably self-destructive Labour party has passed their own absolute nonsense "online safety" bill, and are likely to be utterly destroyed in the next election with repealing the bill being part of the platform of the party that is polling at ~twice the share of the next largest party. With the EU providing blame-as-a-service, though, it is unlikely that anybody will be able to repeal Chat Control once rammed through, without exiting the EU entirely.
Imagine is those issues were campaign promises and part of internal(country's) elections - they aren't in reality but we can set that aside for now. as it was extremely well said by sibling post.
My country is 80% against 20% in favor(in practice it is even more skewed towards 'no' for chat control!), other EU countries are 51% for, 49% against.
Yet such 'vote' by heads of state counts whole countries in,if you were to count individual votes majority of EU citizens would be against it.
This allows you to pass undesirable or extremely contentious legislation, that would most likely prevent you from being elected in the future in your local elections but you can easily shift the blame too!
This is as far form democracy as possible, it is pure bureaucracy that serves it's own goals.
A unitary state would solve that problem by allowing us to have simple, Union-wide elections instead.
"But why can't we just leave the EU to stop this" - too late. Most EU countries have enough intra-EU migration and trade to make leaving unthinkable. The UK was a special case - and, ironically enough, actually responsible for some of the EU's worst decisions.
Furthermore, this isn't exactly an EU exclusive problem. Every supranational organization that is responsive to member states and not individual voters is a policy laundering mechanism. Ask yourself: where's your representation in the WTO, and when did you vote for them? The sum of democracy and democracy is dictatorship. Any governing body that does not respect all of its voters equally is ripe for subsumption by people who do not respect them at all.
[0] Originally, US senators were appointed by state governors. This eventually resulted in everyone voting for whatever governor promised to appoint the senator the voter wanted. Which is sort of like throwing away your gubernatorial vote for a senatorial one. This is why we amended the constitution to allow direct election of senators, and I hold that any sovereign nation that makes the mistake of appointed politicians will inevitably have to either abandon it or fail.
They then in effect elect a Prime Minister, who appoints an executive, who create laws and then put them to parliament
In the US you can vote for the leader of the executive directly. 64% of Vermont voted for Harris, yet they still got Trump.
> in practice it is even more skewed towards 'no' for chat control
My understanding is that the public as a whole do not want chat control, yet the democratically elected heads of each member government do want it. The problem here is the democratically elected heads of each member government.
Doesn't take many council members to be against it to stop it in its tracks.
What has actually happened is that after about three years of faffing about the Council finally decided on it negotiation position begore the Coreper 2 meeting last week, thought it seems they ran put of time at actual the meeting and had to have the formal approval this week.
The Council is only one of three parties that draft new laws, so now there's are still several rounds of negotiations left.
Nothing substantial has happened to the three texts since last week, it's just that "chat control is back" drives traffic and "Council preparatory body formally approves draft position that got consensus previously but didn't formally get passed because people were fighting over Ukraine stuff for too long" doesn't.
While I agree with your point, it's still crucial to raise awareness of Europe's actions. It may be a small step, but it is not insignificant.
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