This is a nice piece of democracy right here:
"a measure it had rejected twice in March. Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes. As a result, mass scanning is now permitted again until 2028."
"Oh no we can't get a majority to pass the law!"
"Have you tried getting a majority to not pass the law?"
"Worth a shot!"
"It worked, should we also do this multiple times?"
"Of course not! Pass the law, quickly!"
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 already left for Summer vacation - 112 MEPs of 719 didn't vote.
- The vote was called only two days before as an "Rule 170 - Urgent procedure" - 73 MEPs missed the vote making it "urgent". Normally it takes months of procedure to come up for a final vote.
So 112 MEPs didn't do their job...got it.
Politician can take vacations. Many things went wrong here but this ain't it.
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.
>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 in court. Absolutely insane.
This is some NAZI/USSR shit, except you don't get executed, you get deranked and made homeless and maybe die from that.
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..
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 accordingly, and in my last day before leaving I need to do a handover of my open tasks to whoever will work in my absence.
What's stopping MEPs doing that?
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What I don't understand, based on this: https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195775 the votes are the other way around, with the majority being for. I'm guessing that site has it reversed then or I don't fully understand the proposal? Looking at which politicians from my country voted "no" on this site it seems to be mostly the ones that I'd expect to vote "yes", so that would support this site just having the options reversed.
> What I don't understand, based on this: https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195775 the votes are the other way around
They voted for "Proposition de rejet". It's written there, but it's in French.
Found this, source: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
On 7 July, MEPs voted 331–303 to fast-track the return of Chat Control 1.0 mass scanning. A binding vote follows Thursday, 9 July, where an absolute majority of 361 MEPs is needed to stop it. Take action now to demand they defend your private messages.
"Yes" means stop control, because it's a "proposition de rejet" we're looking at. rejet = reject. Parties in favor of chat control were:
- European People’s Party and
- Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
Countries in favor of chat control were:
Spain, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Hungary, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus
If you look at the initial vote from July 7, there are a few countries who actually wanted to make it an "urgent decision" (other than the countries above):
France, Czechia, Finland, Croatia, Luxembourg
The selection of countries seems so random. The poorer countries seem to be in favor, no judgment there... It looks like a pay-off list, though.
The whole thing also played like a game. 6 months ago the vote was signaled as pretty safely against chat control. You could watch how one by one the MEPs switched their positions. I assume they realized the vote wont hurt them because it's under the radar of general population. So it was safe to follow the lobby money.
I don't know about the other countries, but in Romania most politicians are aligned with our secret service (quite a few even in the upper echelons are literally undercover agents - which sounds like a conspiracy theory but is well documented in some cases), so they are quite naturally aligned with this initiative.
Maybe the voters also got confused and that's why it passed?
They have one job (with a high salary), a lot of personal assistants and technical support from specialist from their own party. They only have to remember if they have to press the red or the blue button.
Hmm most MPs from Renew, Greens and eurosceptics (ECR) from my country voted yes. I'm a bit surprised since some of those are hardliner Christian conservatives that I'd never vote for under any circumstances.
>This is a nice piece of democracy right here:
this is just eu in a nutshell, the irish were made to vote on both nice and lisbon treaties twice (both were voted no in the first vote)
Well, the No vote triggered some adjustments, so this is indeed relatively democratic. What would be the alternative?
Let's just as enthusiastically revote on the chat control law right now then! Oh, wait... revotes only happen when the bureaucrats/lobbyists want them
Any time now even the most pro-european EU defender will realise that what was once a trade union has slowly transformed itself into an undemocratic, bureaucratic monster.
Only in some bubbles. But most normies I know are massive EU fanboys and showing them the negatives the EU is doing, they just shrug at best, or call you a Putin supporter at worst.
They'll only realize this when the jackboot is on their neck. But probably not even then because in some EU countries government obedience is like a religion.
Democracy is when you just try and try again and again until it passes with 51/49. Then its democratic and legitimized and only evil terrorists would oppose those laws we have all democratically agreed upon.
Also, see the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru - if you aren't liked by the EU courts, they just accuse you of "collusion with Russia" and ban your bank account via "sanction policies". The ECJ doesn't have to provide any evidence of crime, you have to provide counter-evidence of the absence of crime (and good luck defending yourself without money). The ECJ judges, who interpret and impose these laws, are also not democratically really elected or anything, yet they hold power over your bank account. Makes ya think.
How did you connect the linked Wikipedia article to EU courts and ECJ?
This journalist was not sanctioned by the court.
The court approved the sanctions when he tried to challenge them.
> Also, see the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru - if you aren't liked by the EU courts, ...
This was done by the Council of Europe (an organisation made up of a mix of member state foreign ministers and member state parliament members)
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...
No court was involved as far as I can tell...
That’s even worse
Except in this case it actually passed 49/51.
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True, the solution is to just start murdering politicians. Thanks for the advice America.
Are you claiming this would be ineffective?
The problem is you can't choose which side the gun nuts end up on.
I am
We're currently running a long-term offshore experiment to see if 2A has any measurable impact on dragnet surveillance and the NSA.
There are plenty of things to complain about here, and that is one of them. But that authorization was passed by our elected representatives by a super majority and reauthorized by them multiple times. It was not done by a sneaky maneuver where the majority of congress voted against it but somehow it still became law.
And yet people were happy to call Snowden a traitor for breaking the news of it.