Nice to see abstention from Canada, Finland, Japan, South Korea, India, Iceland, Germany, Mexico, and Switzerland as well. Not everyone is on board with this (for good reason), it’s not just the big bad US ignoring the rest of the world.
Given the presence of some extremely authoritarian states on the list of signatories, the fact that the UK and France signed on seems to confirm my suspicions about the trajectory of freedom in those countries. And surprisingly Sweden! I feel like Mullvad users should be concerned.
All better company than the countries listed as signatories.
I’m actually not sure about Germany though. I almost posted a similar list above but then I noticed the European Union is listed as a signatory, so not sure where that puts the EU members not listed: https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mt...
This is indeed strange. Can the EU sign treaties that are binding on all member countries? And if so, what’s the deal with France and other countries signing on redundantly?
Edit: another commenter mentioned something about treaties needing to go through the EU parliament and council if the areas of concern aren’t delegated to the EU. Not sure which side of the fence this falls under, and I bet there are some potential legal challenges waiting regardless. So perhaps France is hedging its bets by signing on as an individual nation, indicating its willingness to implement the treaty no matter what happens with the rest of the EU. But I am no expert on EU bureaucracy and politics!
> But I am no expert on EU bureaucracy and politics!
I’d be shocked if anyone alive is.
A couple of weeks ago the Council of the EU authorized both the Commission and members to sign onto this convention. That’s the best I’ve got and it still doesn’t tell us if this is would apply automatically to Germany and others without them signing on, but I guess in theory it helps the convention get over the 40 signature threshold if it weren’t going to already. Signing on still isn’t done either as it runs from October 25th 2025 through December 31st 2026.
PS: if you saw a previous version of this comment, your eyes weren’t fooling you, I just got taken for a ride by a bad source that confused the Council of Europe with the Council of the EU so I nuked it.
> Can the EU sign treaties that are binding on all member countries?
That depends on the topic of the treaty.
The EU member countries have delegated their decision making powers on certain limited number of topics to the EU institutions, like The EU Commission, The EU Council or possibly others. One such topic is the trade. As a result, all EU countries share the same trade policy.
For other topics, where there is no such delegation in place, everything needs to be ratified by every member country individually.
I am unsure into which category this particular treaty falls.