The "EU" is not "greenlighting" that proposal this week. The Council of the EU will vote on their negotiation stance, which is merely one step in the legislative process, after which the Commission (which is pro-scanning) and the parliament (which is broadly against it) will get involved.
> As the commission is the executive branch, candidates are chosen individually by the 27 national governments. Within the EU, the legitimacy of the commission is mainly drawn from the vote of approval that is required from the European Parliament, along with its power to dismiss the body.
So, the part of the EU appointed by member governments is the part driving this. The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by national governments.
>The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by national governments.
But if the representatives are chosen by the, presumably, democratically elected governments how are they "anti-democratic". Unless representative democracies are inherently undemocratic (and therefore most European government themselves undemocratic), I fail to see how this can be described as "anti-democratic".
In basically every democracy there is a way for the elected representatives to push through legislation which is unpopular or only supported by a small portion of the population. But this is an intentional feature.
If you read
>The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by national governments.
as
>The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by democratically elected national governments.
This is a perfectly fine statement. The policy is argued to be anti-democratic because of its substance, not because of how democratic the process is by which it is adopted.
A measure with broad popular support can be anti-democratic, a measure only supported by a small portion of the population can be pro-democratic. It's orthogonal and if anything there is an inverse correlation.
The issue of chat control is also orthogonal to it's "democracy". It is neither democratic nor anti-democratic. It obviously in no way invalidates people's rights to determine their government, labeling arbitrary issues as "anti-democratic" just because you don't like them is very unhelpful.
Without expressing my stance on this policy itself: Many measures can be reasonably called "democratic" or "anti-democratic" because they have the potential to affect the ability of the populace to express dissent, and organise political opposition, or because it is seen of creating the tools for the government to create a chilling effect in that respect. As such, it is not at all "obvious" that everyone will agree that it does not affect peoples democratic rights, whether you think so or not.
> It obviously in no way invalidates people's rights to determine their government
But it can do that, if / when it starts getting misused.
There was this "SS not all criminals" political party, AfD in Germany, that got lots of votes during the EU elections. AfD + Chat Control is not any good
Nonsense. Chat control is prior constraint of speech. You can't argue that automated content filters are not censorship. You can agree with the ends (or what content is filtered, and even the governance), but the means themselves are thoroughly anti-democratic. And rife for abuse.
The problem is they see democracy as only the power of the people and not the power of the people in humanitarian context.
So if 80% want to kill 20% that’s ok with them but wouldn’t be ok with people with a humanitarian democracy view.
The member states are as much a part of the EU as the parliament is.
It's disingenuous to say that this is not the EU, of course it's also disingenuous to say that the EU is a monolith who wants this at all levels, but two wrongs don't make a right
>And at every stage people will talk about how horrible EU is as if this has already passed, just like last time.
Even the idea makes me loose all faith in the institution. How can you be okay with people as deranged as this making rules about the future of your country?
"Not everyone is insane", just isn't a particularly strong point.
Could instead be like the US where citizens aren't even allowed to read parts of the spying laws that apply to them. The endgame being to surreptitiously bug every device and application with local scanning; changes in ToS that allow this invasion are helpfully conflated with the same language a corpo would use if they wanted to train models on your content.
There is: EU citizens can engage their peers in dialogue on how this behaviour is terrible and they can try their darnedest to convince their peers to never vote for politicians who are part of the problem.
Yes that will work. Just like referendums work in the Netherlands for example. 90% the population vote in a referumdum against a particular agreement. The government voted for it anyway and then got rid of referendums.
I would prefer to have decentralised government. This centralised rules for millions doesn't work and eventually escalate badly.
Just because we give up our responsibility to electorate in hope that they solve our problems. How could they possibly do that for millions of individuals with different problems and needs?
Sure, I can vote people into office, and after their tenure they disappear. But I can't vote their incompetent arses out of offices or prevent them from ever getting elected again when they display blatant disregard for human rights.
I wish that we had this possibility, but here in France the bad political parties have strong regulatory barriers to prevent independent and need comers to be candidate or have a chance to be president and sometimes parlement members...
I'm sorry, are you talking about the plastic caps that stay attached to plastic bottles so that they are more likely to be disposed of properly rather than end up in some marine (or other nature) environment?
I cannot believe you're comparing that (an effort designed to make recycling more effective, which is generally a good thing) to EU citizens entirely losing our access to privacy in the digital world.
The same, it solves a marginal problem (people that throw away on the highway only the plastic caps, and somehow keep separate the bottle), in an absurd way that punishes all the nice users, again, just to solve a small % of very cases.
The guys who somehow enjoy throwing away plastic caps, will likely remove it anyway.
The same with the spying, all users will suffer, but those who want to work around it, will find a way.
The irony is that it makes driving more dangerous now, as you need two hands to drink from a water bottle.
Punish is a strong word, it slightly inconveniences all "the nice users".
It's really not that big of a deal honestly, you unscrew the bottle, flip the cap up (it kinda locks like that and stays out of your way in one of the designs I've seen, in the other it's just attached and can easily be kept out of the way with a finger), then you drink, I fail to see how you suddenly need two hands as opposed to before...
There are many regulations that slightly inconvenience the many, to address the problems of a few. Individually these cases are benign. As a group they compound complexity.
Each new reform should be evaluated on both its benefits and the burden that it brings.
Wholeheartedly agree. But we (as a society) have neglected the environment for far too fucking long now, some inconvenience for tiny gains is valid until we start seeing societal and environmental improvements.
How exactly do bottle caps in the EU end up in marine environments? And if they do that should be pretty easy to fix.
These regulations won’t do anything to stop countries in Asia, Africa and other places from pumping their garbage into rivers and oceans…
To be fair I don’t really mind the bottle caps (unlike the plastic straw ban) but it hardly accomplishes anything beautiful allowing people in the EU to feel better about themselves because they are doing their part (which is possibly actually counterproductive).
The solution was an EU-wide plastic bottle deposit, this way, it pushes people to bring back intact bottles with their caps and get ~0.10 EUR back for each.
And if you are too lazy to bring it back or just a person who throws away stuff carelessly, someone else will do (big sorting centers as it's a big revenue-stream, the cleaners, the homelesses, some bored students, etc).
I'm all for requiring bottle deposit/returns schemes. I loved the Norwegian one for example, but if you require the return of both or nothing, you will likely end up with a net reduction in returned plastic. If you were to reward returns separately, maybe. But even then you'd be more likely to ensure caps don't get lost if they stay attached.
I dunno how you drink out of a bottle, but I most certainly don't deep throat it to have its neck in my mouth. Please enlighten me how it would make it impossible to "drink properly" when the bottle is flipped beyond the neck.
I have problem with 0.5l yoghurt bottles. Yoghurt is best when shaken before opening the bottle because its viscosity spreads evenly, otherwise you get watery yoghurt on top, bottom is too dense.
I enjoy having morning breakfast in the park, drinking yoghurt straight from the bottle. When I shake it, yoghurt sticks to the cap. When caps were removable, I'd put it aside so that yoghurt that stuck to the cap does not spill on my shirt, re-screw it after I finish and throw bottle and cap to the bin. Now it's hard to remove the cap and I spill yoghurt on my shirt frequently, so I go to greater lengths to tear the cap away and re-screw when I empty the bottle.
I do not know what it means to "flip a bottle beyond the neck".
Tetrapack milk packages have some sort of a "roof" on top. The opening is on one of the sides of the roof. It is hard to drink from that anyway, now additionally the cap is pressing against the lips.
You don't have to "deep throat" a water bottle either to feel the effect. The cap always disturbs.
It is also ugly of you have water bottles on a dinner table with the cap hanging on the side.
It is also harder to screw the cap back on.
But like in the EU, criticism here can just be flagged and then it never happened.
Passing is one thing. They waste everyone's time by threatening to pass idiotic legislation every 6 months. But perhaps that is the goal so people do not investigate why the EU is getting poorer and all money goes into housing and healthcare.
I'm not sure that's ever been true on PPP? It may have been on a nominal basis from time to time due to a weak dollar (1 EUR hit 1.60 USD or so during the financial crisis), but that's of limited interest for the average person.
It is still possible to contact your EU permanent representative group via email. Op link in "what to do" section has a precompiled email which you can send to your permanent representation group.
As little as it may be, I sent it to the Italian representative group, to the team that oversees telecommunications
Technically the commission came first, after this vote it'll go to parliament and then if there's a need for mediation the commission will be involved together with parliament and council
Well apparently NL is clear in opposing it but I am a citizen of Ireland (it's not really clear who my representation is in that case) so will try them...
>If you go against what people voted for, isn't it denying democracy and the votes of the people ?
No. An explicit feature of a representative democracy is that the will of the majority can be ignored.
The EU isn't a direct democracy where people can vote on particular issues, they vote on national parties, which send representatives to create EU wide parties.
Yes, some of the parties did. In Sweden for example, the government parties just decided to greenlight the EU proposal that is up for vote now, even though their EU parliament representatives (from the same parties) had said before the recent EU election that they were against it (they even celebrated publicly last autumn when the proposal was downvoted last time). It's a mess trying to keep track of the party politics to be fair and it's possible the EU parliament members are voting in one way while their "mother party" in the home land votes in another way. But it did feel like a rug pull here.
I guarantee you the number of people who voted in the EU elections thinking of this is negligible
And also the council has its own legitimacy which is not dependent on the EU elections, if the EP voted on this as a lame duck you'd have a point, but that doesn't seem to be happening
Most people are just concerned about economic and social issues, and the implications this proposal has on freedom of speech and what that means to democracy seems to be unknown to most.
In Portugal, this proposal was not debated nor was it present on most parties' electoral agendas. Furthermore, I got no replies from the MEP candidates I emailed about their opinion on chatcontrol. Even if I wanted to vote accordingly to this proposal, I simply couldn't.
this specific proposal had the benefit of already having had votes on it, so you could've probably found the parties' voting records there. But yeah, there's a broader issue with how european politics is approached since it is always so nationalized that these kind of votes end up as referendums on the national government, which in turn breeds ignorance of what the EU is responsible for and for what it isn't which feeds the vicious cycle of apathy
I'm mildly optimistic it'll get better since the EU and EU politicians are getting more visible. I just hope we don't overshoot and end up where the US is right now where people seem to think the president does everything at all times at all levels
Btw, I'm assuming you meant "MEP candidate" when you say "deputy candidate", in english as far as I can tell deputy lost the meaning of "legislature member" in common use, that remained common in Latin languages (italian here, we use the same term)
Just an FYI that it might confuse some people (like it did with me before I switched to thinking about it in italian) why you were asking the deputies of a candidate instead of the candidates themselves
Voted and changed their mind for what though? What has this proposal to do with what people voted for? Most people have no clue this is going on; it wasn't in any party program 'for the layman' that said
[x] 'privacy invasive scanning of everything personal, BUT for the benefit of the children and Kutcher'
Most people (even tech people) didn't/don't know about this and also, most people really don't care in the face of other more urgent things (housing, immigration, climate, inflation, etc etc etc).
If you sit down with them and explain (something like: what if this happens and you agree to the scanning, 20 years from now Putin invades your country and you get dragged off the gulag on day #1 because 17 years ago you sent a derogatory image of him to someone; they said they would delete everything!?!), most would probably vote against, but no-one is doing that.
I find it very funny that this law's entire purpose could very well be defeated by another recent-ish EU law, namely the Digital Markets act.
This law is somewhat workable if you assume that App Stores are the only way for mobile apps to be distributed. If users are allowed to sideload, as an app maker from a non-european country, you can just refuse to comply.
This isn't possible with Apple's current implementation of this law, but that implementation is extremely likely to be ruled noncompliant anyway based on what the EU authorities are saying.
Politicians in Europe generally do not appreciate mass, repetitive emailing. It might even have an adversarial effect.
If you want to be helpful, please consider more strategic alternatives such raising awareness among the general public, writing thoughtful arguments, or joining specialized non-profits or political parties.
> Politicians in Europe generally do not appreciate mass, repetitive emailing
Nobody likes this. A concise, thoughtful call or message carries a premium in the states, but only if you’re demonstrably a constituent.
The reason is simple: it shows conviction. If you’re willing to pick up the phone, you might be willing to stump for an opponent. If you’re unwilling to do that, or are raving at the politician such that you would never be won over by them, you’re messaging you’re a lost cause.
The joys of representative democracy. The people are told they are free, but it's the oligarchy in their ivory tower that decide for you.
Every few years you get told you can vote for the next liar to do their bidding in your name, and we, the people, keep the circus alive by telling each other "your vote counts! It's your fault if they're all thieves!"
Government won't stop monitoring each and every citizen, and citizens have stopped any form of resistance, political or technological. Even in tech niches like this, cryptoanarchist ideas get routinely derided as useless and scams. We have lost.
>> Even in tech niches like this, cryptoanarchist ideas get routinely derided as useless and scams.
I agree.
The tendency to over-criticize and deride is part of the self-inflicted helplessness. Every attempt to improve things gets a fair deal of scorn and criticism...which is not exactly good.
Are you saying that most people are likely to support this, or that people actually demanded it?
No one asked for this law, but you can convince the populace a posteriori that this is good for them, certainly. It's all part of the game.
The fact that the hoi polloi can be easily persuaded in any direction is not a reason for the people in power to do whatever the f they want with our rights, hiding beneath the banner of democracy.
Also, whoever says that we, the nerds, should do more to educate the masses is disingenuous when the people in power have massive reach. I can go rant on a blog about what this means for our privacy, while the politician goes on a TV show and on mass media campaigns to claim that this law is to save the children from the baddies.
Call me a silly idealist, but representative democracy is a bloody scam.
Do you believe someone who uses Windows, chats on Discord and posts on Instagram cares about surveillance?
I think there are only two groups of people who still care about this:
- Tech people who are willing to give up QoL to cling to privacy-respecting alternatives. (People like us.) These people are a tiny minority which would be irrelevant in any democratic system.
- Old people who haven't yet arrived in the digital age. These are also a minority, and keep becoming fewer.
I think the vast majority of people have fully accepted constant surveillance of their digital activity by companies (and therefore governments) as simply the way things are.
To these people, this law is a benefit to security with zero tradeoff.
Normal people have no online privacy whatsoever anyway.
And only evil people would use encryption and anonymization, right?
(Tangent 1: Goverments could educate people in a representative democracy, too. People could also use the educational material readily available. But I think most people don't want to be educated on the majority of topics.)
(Tangent 2: I don't think direct democracy is a good system. I think that the vast majority of people (including me) are incapable of making good laws. I believe only a trained professional, aka a politician, is capable of understanding and predicting all the possible long term effects a law, such as e.g. a trade deal, can have. I certainly cannot.)
(ETA: I would go so far as to say that this law being controversially debated is the result of representative democracy working well. I'd claim that in a direct democracy it could easily get passed without much scrutiny.)
Everyone is part of some 1% group. Like imagine how many BS laws e.g. farmers or dentists have to deal with that we don't understand the full lunacy of.
Technically yes, but whether the implementations will work in perpetuity is another matter. Think how much resources are needed to keep legacy infrastructure running in the present day. Will these costs go down significantly once the next round of even more complicated bureaucratic management software comes into effect?
The heavy surveillance states of today will prove an interesting case study of software/data upkeep.
Has anyone in power thought through the scale of this? Even if it has a frankly exceptional error rate of just 0.001%, that still means tens of thousands of innocent Europeans will have their lives ruined every day. And, assuming there's a human in the loop, who are we going to traumatize to check The Machine's work? Is it going to be Kenyans again^, or Eastern Europeans this time?
In the proposal, they write that the service providers have to figure out a way to make the false positives reported to the police "minimal". This is obviously a major burden to put on the service providers, in effect completely excluding all small outfits (and I'm sceptical the large companies want to deal with this either).
Germany have had some similar tech in place according to Der Spiegel, but the entire increase in positives was found out to be legal dickpics and flirty messages between teenagers etc. The only result was that the police now have a huge database of teenager's naked pictures and kids on the beach, which can hardly be a good way to minimize pedophile activity.
It will be a shitshow beyond comprehension if this eventually gets implemented.
France managed to get in an exemption in the proposal for their police and security workers, who can keep their privacy. I think the wording is that this would only apply to apps available to "the public". So if "the public" can't download your app, you're safe...
I think it just shows it won't be possible to implement this in a useful way. Let's hope...
Life ruined as in being flagged and investigated? Or as in, you sent some medical pics of your son's crotch to the dokter and some sicko on the scanning program looks at that photo and spreads it in his network?
and permanently lose access to your google acount, even after lots of stress and the police declaring you innocent[1]. Replace google acount by some other important thing.
The folks over at Tuta interviewed Patrick Breyer about this yesterday and his explanation of Chat Control is downright sinister. Link here: https://youtu.be/wSEI-dg3Hpo
Let's keep spreading the word about this, the whole Chat Control debate seems to be ignored right now in the media.
ofc, some guy at every TV channel can't wait to call up his homie at that gov. institution that gets to process all that data. marketaching*can y'all here the cashier dancing?
Not for the masses. They cannot be bothered and most likely don't care until it is too late.
For the technologist, it is easy to circumvent in the private sphere of life at least.
I foresee however, a digital ID that will be tied to all your essential services, that you will be required to have in order to live, and that's the tracking and communication point that will be used to get a hold of you.
Kind of like the chinese social credit score, but in the EU of tomorrow, your digital EU idea will be the choking point. Do something out of line, and it can be revoked and with it, your bank, credit cards, health care, travel and other services.
> but in the EU of tomorrow, your digital EU idea will be the choking point. Do something out of line, and it can be revoked and with it, your bank, credit cards, health care, travel and other services.
I won't say that future will never happen only because "never" is a long time, but that's not happening in the foreseeable future.
I'm in Germany right now, and theoretically my ID card can be used online.
In practice, "Digitalisierung" is kinda a joke here, much like "paperless office".
For example, I have to visit an office to activate that feature of my ID card, and another to tell them I've moved.
During the pandemic, they briefly realised they didn't need to do that, then they forgot.
Likewise with health, there's more than one health insurance provider just in Germany, let alone the whole EU, and if I move country (not just travel, move) my previous insurance isn't likely to work in the new place anyway — it would take substantial improvements before it would even be possible for someone to corrut it the way you're afraid of.
Germany is a lot less digital than the rest of Europe though. Germans by-and-large even refuse to use debit cards (pin&chip). It's so strange visiting Germany as a tourist and not being able to pay with my card in a restaurant for example.
Germany has a very well established electronic cash system in the form of Girocard because the overwhelming majority has a Girokonto and thus no need for a separate payment method. So why should any business in Germany go through the trouble to offer additional payment options for the extremely few cases where a customer cannot pay via Girocard or with cash?
If you are frustrated that you cannot use your card you should blame whoever issued it to you. It's their responsibility to convince businesses to offer their payment method.
> Germans by-and-large even refuse to use debit cards (pin&chip)
I’d call that a minority, especially since Covid.
> not being able to pay with my card in a restaurant for example
An even smaller minority, especially for restaurants, slightly larger for non-chain fast food places that probably also cheat on taxes.
I don’t carry cash with me and pay almost everything with my MC debit or AMEX credit card, even in cases I can’t do that, I’d be able to pay with girocard (non-MC/Visa debit card, a widespread local system) if I had one.
>>An even smaller minority, especially for restaurants, slightly larger for non-chain fast food places that probably also cheat on taxes.
Personal anecdote, but I've been travelling through Germany this winter and outside of motorway petrol stations and big supermarkets pretty much no one would accept my Visa/MasterCard cards - "EC Karten" only everywhere. We went to a big restaurant which I assumed would be ok because I could see the card terminal at the till, and at the end they told me it's EC Karten only - had to drive around at 11pm to find a working ATM just to withdraw some euro to pay them, while my wife and son waited at the restaurant - absolute nonsense.
Are you sure it's not just that your card has both EC and Visa Electron/Mastercard Meastro or similar, and that it's the EC part they accept?
It's been a few years since I've been to Germany, but for comparison, in Norway - while it's nearly unheard of now - you also used to be able to find places that'd take "BankAxept" bank cards, which would be pretty much every domestic debit card, and is similar to EC Karten, but not Visa Electron/Mastercard Maestro debit cards.
If you had a domestic debit card, you'd almost certainly have a Visa/Maestro logo on it as well and so it'd be easy for people to assume that was what they were paying with.
Works fine for me, as I said, I can pay with MC debit almost everywhere. The bonus is no-fee foreign currency payments, just for the basic MC exchange rate. Back then I checked, and the only others that offered that were mobile-only banks.
But from all the comments, I’m starting to wonder if SumUp had some focus on Lübeck and Hamburg for other places to not have the huge advances in card payments of recent years.
Was travelling through Sassnitz / Rugen last year and the restaurants we visited didn't accept cards. We had to run around late trying to find an ATM the first evening. And that is a tourist region even..
I work in Mitte in Berlin, 30 minutes walk from Brandenburger Tor, and just got lunch from a pizza takeaway in a building that didn't exist 5 years ago.
They only took cash.
Overall it seems more common than when I first moved here, but that's starting from a low bar, I'd guess going from 1/6th to 1/2 of the cafes and restaurants.
The future is here in the Netherlands though. Your driver's licence is tapped to your phone so your banking app can read it via NFC, etc. - would not be surprised if other apps require the same (after all, we need to vet who is on social media - it could be kids!)
Worked for deprioritizing biodiversity efforts for the sake of mass produced animal products, because, more processing steps => higher economic yield. Money talks.
You actually get them to use it? That's the problem with most of these ideas: sure, you can just roll your own encryption, chat program, etc., but getting the people in your life to use it is another matter. My mom has enough trouble using the popular and ubiquitous chat app we communicate through; something custom is going to be beyond her.
Going custom is beyond the majority of people, of course pedophiles will still be able to avoid being spied on, while the everyday Joe won't spend time to. I even doubt everyday Joe will know about this
At the end, it could be a OS-based scanning, so no matter if the message is encrypted in transit, or self-hosted, then if the message is displayed it could be transmitted and scanned.
That will never fly in every Linux distribution (if any at all), so there’s never going to be a way to stop this for even reasonably proficient criminals.
Many, and most of them are easy enough that anyone seriously concerned with privacy or secrecy will use them. They do take effort though, which means that while journalists, lawyers, corporations, governments, privacy nerds, and criminals will use them, the average person will not.
What we would lose is that secure communication is actually mainstream now. Billions of people, many of whom don't even know what "end to end encrypted" means use messaging services with strong encryption including WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, even Facebook chat in some cases. These services make mass surveillance difficult or impossible, and targeted surveillance of their users requires significant effort, such as installing malware on a target's device.
"All services normally provided for remuneration (including ad-funded services) are in scope, without no threshold in size, number of users etc."
"Only non-commercial services that are not ad-funded, such as many open source software, are out of scope"
Weird right? But it would be weirder if they would outlaw the application of mathematical operations on your own messages... oh wait that's what they are proposing... Try and stop me. Are they going to put me in jail because I don't want them to read messages between me and my friends or my wife?
> Are they going to put me in jail because I don't want them to read messages between me and my friends or my wife?
Them: "If you don't show us your messages, you are probably going to jail. So if you don't change your mind, and end up in jail without having shown us your messages, that means whatever was in those messages was way worse than going to jail. You probably knew you were going to get a longer sentence if you showed us those messages, and preferred to go with a shorter sentence of 'refusing to collaborate'."
"Only non-commercial services that are not ad-funded, such as many open source software, are out of scope"
So, what's the use of this law anyway?
I do wonder what open source means though. Is Signal opensource? The client is, the server is not... Matrix is fully open source... And Whatsapp (which my country runs on) which has open source encryption...?
So I can set up a server for my family and do no scanning, and that's not illegal. Can I let my neighbour join. How far down the street am I allowed to offer this service before it becomes in scope? Can I make a preconfigured, plug-and-play appliance that runs an encrypted chat server on a home internet connection and give that to someone I know? Someone I don't know?
This is one of those extremely frustrating laws that's just going to hit everyone EXCEPT the ones who deserve it.
There is something weird about EU approach to online child protection. They project themselves as being hell-bent on solving the problem, yet, as with the US with the Jeffrey Epstein case, they are curiously inactive when it comes to prosecution of pedophiles. As if they're keen to find them, but not so keen to lock them up. WTF do they do with these pedophiles once they find them? Promote them to public office so they can be extorted and controlled? It doesn't add up.
Seems like there is something weird about EU and pedophilia. Coincidentally, it seems as if the EU is operating under the thumb of a foreign power. After being involved in the tech sector there, it has been a recurring theme. I never heard about that stuff when working for US tech companies. In other countries, they also handle the problem but they don't constantly virtue-signal about it. Also when I was in the crypto space working on EU-backed projects, I heard rumors that some of the founders had been victims (or maybe also the other way? Like a cult) I inferred that they were being extorted. When I read conspiracy theories about that sort of stuff, it oddly resonates with some of my experiences in the tech sector when you get close to the big money and big politics.
The increase of popularity of conspiracy theories and the recurring theme of pedophilia is also starting to seem suspicious.
How will this affect companies in a technical aspect? Just no more e2e encryption available in the clients? Or will it be some kind of weird e2e with a backdoor (which is not how encryption works)…
at some point we need to bring back the idea of direct democracy on the table (online voting with blockchain or whatever) so that "representatives" are not needed anymore and cant be lobbied year on year against individual interests
The problem with the current state of the EU is that it is governed by unelected politicians - the EU Comission, and they are very out of touch with reality. Plus the fact they managed to make themselves very hard to control or remove from power.
Latest example being farmers that are being targeted and until they did not come to Brussels to dump manure in the streets, the EU Comission did not care a bit of the harm they were causing them. And it did not care even then until France used its power to get it to listen.
The EU started as a nice project that is slowly becoming something thst not even in the wildest communist dreams was thought not possible.
In this specific example it's not the Commission that drives this initiative, but the Council, which is formed of head of states for the individual members.
one click there to get to your particular country.
It sure would be nice if it had a list of people to contact at the top.
Also HN is killing patrick-breyer's site, so it is even more difficult for all these committed people to find the place they should go look for who to contact.
Contact in Denmark - brurep@um.dk is evidently the one.
It feels so polarizing with the EU at one point they push for strong privacy laws the next they push shit like this.
It's like their gun law that was a response to the Islamic terrorists using smuggled ak47 from the balkans but the law flat out bans anything bugger than a pistol pretty much.
I've (with help of ChatGPT) written an email that I've sent to all representatives. Feel free to use it!
To: info.belgoeurop@diplobel.fed.be, mission.brusselseu@bg-permrep.eu, eu.brussels@embassy.mzv.cz, brurep@um.dk, info@bruessel-eu.diplo.de, permrep.eu@mfa.ee, irlprb@dfa.ie, mea.bruxelles@rp-grece.be, reper.bruselasue@reper.maec.es, courrier.bruxelles-dfra@diplomatie.gouv.fr, hr.perm.rep@mvep.hr, rpue.rpue@esteri.it, cy.perm.rep@mfa.gov.cy, permrep.eu@mfa.gov.lv, office@eu.mfa.lt, bruxelles.rpue@mae.etat.lu, sec.beu@mfa.gov.hu, maltarep@gov.mt, bre@minbuza.nl, bruessel-ov@bmeia.gv.at, bebrustpe@msz.gov.pl, reper@mne.pt, bru@rpro.eu, slomission.eu@gov.si, eu.brussels@mzv.sk, sanomat.eue@formin.fi, representationen.bryssel@gov.se
Subject: Urgent: Chat Control
Dear Representative,
I am writing to express my deep concerns regarding Chat Control. As a citizen of the European Union, I am committed to safeguarding our fundamental rights and freedoms, particularly the right to privacy and the protection of personal data.
The Chat Control Chat Control poses several significant risks:
Invasion of Privacy: The proposed measures would lead to the mass surveillance of private communications, undermining the privacy of all EU citizens. This broad surveillance is disproportionate and infringes on our fundamental right to private correspondence.
Security Risks: Weakening encryption to facilitate the monitoring of communications makes all users more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Encryption is essential for protecting sensitive data, including financial information, personal communications, and sensitive business data.
Potential for Abuse: Granting authorities the power to monitor private communications without adequate checks and balances can lead to misuse and abuse of power. This undermines trust in both governmental and digital platforms.
Stifling Innovation: Chat Control could have a chilling effect on tech innovation within the EU. Companies may be discouraged from developing new technologies or offering their services in the EU due to increased regulatory burdens and privacy concerns.
I urge you to oppose Chat Control and advocate for solutions that protect children online without compromising the privacy and security of all citizens. Alternatives such as targeted interventions, improved digital literacy, and support for responsible online behavior are more effective and less intrusive ways to achieve these goals.
Protecting the privacy and security of our digital communications is crucial for maintaining trust in the digital economy and upholding the values of the European Union. I hope you will consider these points and vote against Chat Control.
Thank you for your attention to this critical matter.
Yours sincerely,
[your name/address/etc.]
If you are outside the EU, change the first paragraph to:
I am writing to express my deep concern regarding the proposed Chat Control legislation, despite not being a resident of the European Union. As someone who values privacy and security in digital communications, I believe this legislation has far-reaching implications that extend beyond the borders of the EU.
What's Switzerland's stance on this (message scanning)? From what I have seen this entire topic keeps coming up in the US, the UK and some European countries and is just impossible to keep dead, because some citizens are strongly lobbying in favor of it.
I'm not sure if this can work long term unless some fundamentals change. A lot of victims of CSEM will keep that topic alive. It's rather unpopular to stand against this given that "live with it" is sort of the only alternative.
It's easier to run a country when it is holding all the drug cartel and dictator money of the planet. You do not have to steal from your citizens as much.
1- if you talk to a person from eu, your data will be affected
2- nobody guarantees switzerland will not want to do the same thing, just like UK.
3- switzerland is not part of eu, but certain behavior of sw is influenced by the eu's decisions, since basically all the border is shared with eu countries and those can put pressure on switzerland to adapt certain laws (ofc not openly)
Considering the current relationship between the Federal Council and the EU, I don't think it would be close this time around.
Edit: Actually there was a votation for adhesion to the European Economic Area in 1992, but also for full adhesion to the EU in 2001 (rejected at 76.8%). Switzerland is not even close to become a member state.
As a Norwegian, I’m not sure this matters. You think app publishers are going to release a Swiss/Norwegian version that doesn’t have that? Nah, they’ll just release the same version with chat control in all of Europe. (Besides the fact that Norway usually rubber stamps EU rules without much consideration, which maybe isn’t a problem in Switzerland)
> Utterly revolting how the EU has become an authoritarian and socialist project expanding its power over EU citizens and countries.
As the link explains, the Commission is proposing this at the behest of member states. You have it completely backward. Your elected national representatives are trying to force this through, and ironically, your elected MEPs (European representatives) are trying to save you.
Anti-EU people are often so unbelievably misinformed.
The AfD literally has meetings about mass deportations and many members at the top are literally neo-nazis. One member of parliament was even involved in a group that was planning a coup. When they started defending the Waffen-SS instead of discussing real problems it was even too much for Rassemblement National. You talking points about fake news are following the party line to denounce existing institutions and to appeal to conservatives.
There is no way one can describe the AfD as center-right. This is obvious fact that emerges from any amount observation of post-WW2 politics in that country, and how the AfD compares to standard center-right parties like the CDU/CDS and the FDP.
Complaints about fake news and what the mainstream media supposedly says about anything are usually, in themselves, fake news.
>But why would you vote for other (far right) authoritarians?
OP implies he wouldn't, but that regular voters would: most voters don't think things through that much, so when they get mad about some issue, they'll vote against whoever they think is to blame for it.
this is not a socialist decision. In fact, this is a decision that benefits big corpos and certain substrate of ppl that want to stay in power (while socialism means that decisions should benefit general population)
Please don't conflate socialism with authoritarianism. There's non-authoritarian socialists; there's non-socialist authoritarians. They are two independent axis.
In the case of the EU, it's a capitalist authoritarian project.
It's not possible to achieve socialism without authoritarianism because that's the only way to enforce social ownership of the means of production against private ownership...
Edit:
There is no meaningul difference between socialism and communism, especially on this aspect (ownership of means of production), which is key to conclude that the system must be authoritarian.
"According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, "Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death"" [1]
The 'distinction' was created by Lenin and the Bolcheviks for political purposes.
"The distinction between communism and socialism became salient in 1918 after the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party renamed itself to the All-Russian Communist Party, interpreting communism specifically to mean socialists who supported the politics and theories of Bolshevism, Leninism and later that of Marxism–Leninism,[53] although communist parties continued to describe themselves as socialists dedicated to socialism." [1]
In Europe, most socialist parties have evolved to simply seek to implement socialist-inspired ideas within a capitalist society and perhaps state capitalism, whereas communist parties stayed on Lenin's line and seek to overthrow the system to set up a fully socialist society.
What is wrong about the means of production being under social ownership in socialism? Yes, socialism allows also some private property and there is spectrum of how much it is a planned economy but social ownership of the means of production is a central component of socialism.
Socialism does not require an authoritarian state, period. It's much larger than that, and it is a gradient. Just like "not being socialist" does not mean that you are libertarian: you can be a moderate liberal.
For instance, saying that public transportation should be public (i.e. belong to the state) does not mean that the state is authoritarian. You can have more moderate forms of socialism.
I find it interesting that the Wikipedia articles are pretty different in different languages. In French it is much more moderate than in English, for instance: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialisme.
> For instance, saying that public transportation should be public (i.e. belong to the state) does not mean that the state is authoritarian.
Sure, but that's not socialism. That's state capitalism at most.
There is not gradient. If society is socialist then as per definition and as explained there must be authoritarianism to suppress any private initiative.
The article in French says the same thing as I wrote before: "socialist parties" are no longer socialist:
"Le socialisme démocratique, c'est-à-dire un socialisme converti à la démocratie libérale et respectueux du jeu parlementaire, représente aujourd'hui la tendance majoritaire des partis socialistes, qui n'envisagent plus la rupture avec l'économie de marché."
If they no longer want to get rid of the market economy and private ownership then they are no longer socialist at all! Socialism has demonstrably failed so they have been trying to adapt while keeping the name...
> There is not gradient. If society is socialist then as per definition and as explained there must be authoritarianism to suppress any private initiative.
This logic works both ways. There is authoritarianism to enforce private ownership in capitalism. The police is a tool of the capitalist class, designed to suppress any protest against the capitalist system. It even extends internationally, to Imperialism. One only needs to think of banana republics, or more recently, Coca Cola murdering union leaders.
> The article in French says the same thing as I wrote before: "socialist parties" are no longer socialist:
That's not what the sentence you quoted says. Do you speak french? Just to know (respectfully) if we need to debate the meaning of that sentence, or if I need to translate it for you.
That sentence precisely means that there is a gradient.
I am French, with an understanding of what words actually mean. This article is highly misleading, to be polite. Socialism that has converted to liberal democracy and no longer seeks to replace the market economy is simply not socialism by definition, it's basically social democracy. That's what I have been writing and repeating: It's not because it's called "socialist party" that it is socialist, and that has been the case for decades. Maybe you're too young to grasp this fully.
You think that it's not socialism anymore (which is fair, "socialisme democratique" is not "socialism" anymore), and I say that socialism has evolved ("socialisme democratique" is an evolution of socialism that works in democracies). In the end it's just a difference in the definition.
The fact remains that the US don't really have the equivalent of "Parti Socialiste": the democrats would be on the right wing in France, right?
That wasn't really my point but rather that social ownership of the means of production is a defining characteristic of socialism (as it was conceived in opposition to capitalism). Maybe there is a voluntary way to it but I don't think that has happened anywhere on a large scale so far.
These days there is a tendency to use socialism and practical present-day social democracy rather interchangeably, but I think that is problematic (and the latter doesn't really aim for socialism anymore, I'd say).
I have never ever before in my whole life seen anyone, either online or offline, under any circumstance, seen someone point to something good the EU did and claim it as an example of socialism working. It's simply not socialist.
Every nation in the EU has their own healthcare system.
I live in the Netherlands. I pay more than 150 euros per month out of my own pocket for health insurance (it's mandatory to have one and they are in this price range), and even though I pay that much per month, I still have to pay the first 385 euros out of my own pocket if I go to the doctor for anything.
I fucking wish that healthcare was socialized.
And do you know what I get for this price. Access to a private GP that will at most give you some ibuprofen before they send you home.
"Socialized healthcare" is not "socialist healthcare", in fact a fundamentally capitalist society would benefit from socialized healthcare simply because the state subsidizing the health of workers benefits the owning class...
Healthcare is a matter for individual countries in Europe and its organisation varies a lot.
For instance, in the UK the NHS is indeed in essence a socialist construct. But in France GPs are all private practices and the system is essentially a mandatory insurance.
What is the difference between socialism and communism, then?
If you listen to Leninists, 'communism' is the ultimate form of 'socialism' but really that was created because Russia's industry was judged too undeveloped to achieve what Marx described. But there is no meaningful systemic difference.
I think "EU people" know that very well, including from experience.
What's happened is that most "socialist" parties have shifted and now really only seek to implement socialist-inspired ideas with a capitalist society, whereas communist parties still seek actual socialism.
> What is the difference between socialism and communism
It's a bit like the difference between "liberal" and "libertarian". It is a gradient.
Socialism is a more global term that includes communism. Communism wants to remove social classes and the notion of state. But there are ways of being socialist in a democratic state.
It is a gradient, you can be more or less extreme. Communism is a pretty extreme notion of socialism.
Some EU countries are more "social", i.e. the socialist parties are strong and society is organized in a much, much social way than the US. But US people have this tendency to think that either you are libertarian, or you are communist.
As said, most socialist parties in Europe are no longer socialist...
There is no gradient. Either you want private ownership or you want socialised ownership. I think you are not quite clear about what "socialism" means because there are so many "socialist" parties in Europe that have not actually been socialist for 70+ years...
For instance in France, with people from the socialist party always referred to as "les socialistes"... Well, Miterrand and, say, Strauss-Khan, and even Macron (former banker...) who was finance minister in a "socialist government" are obviously as socialist as Barak Obama. The historic French socialist party, the SFIO, founded in 1905 was really socialist and split following the Russian revolution, whose supporters created the communist party (and they were actually the majority of the SFIO's members). They stayed socialist while the "socialist party" shifted over time to effectively social democracy. I think that this is because of the realisation that socialism requires authoritarism and does not work anyway, while pushing for more social measures within capitalism and a market economy can work.
Are you from the US, and trying to tell me that what EU people have been meaning by "socialism" in the last "70+ years" is wrong because that's not your definition?
My feeling is that US people tend to struggle understanding that there are cultural differences in the world, and think that "socialism" has to mean what they understand from their US-centric point of view.
"Socialism" is a bad word in the US, not at all in the EU.
> are obviously as socialist as Barak Obama
In my country, we tend to say that Barack Obama is our right wing, and those right to him are our far right. And that's not something you can debate: that's how we see it in my country. For me, Mitterrand is clearly to the left of Obama.
And Macron is a fraud, I don't see the point in bringing him here.
Well, I am French, so really my comments were factual and a history lesson, really... "Socialism" has a precise meaning, as described several times in my previous comments. Socialism isn't social democracy.
Socialism is a bad word in the EU for most people in Western Europe who have some perspective and understanding of what it means (again which is usually not the same as the parties that have "socialist" in their names advocate), and certainly for the people in Eastern Europe who actually experienced it firsthand.
Perhaps there is a generational issue as well. When I grew up there were socialist countries in half of Europe and the French Communist Party was good friend with them and the big guys in Moscow (You know, the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Now, anyone under 35 was born after socialism disappeared from Europe so perhaps lack understanding, including that it is not a fairytale but an utter failure (hence shift away from it).
Right. Then it feels like we only disagree on the surface :-). You seem to say "Socialism as it used to be has disappeared" and I say "Socialism has evolved".
My original reaction towards US people is that I really feel like whatever is left on Barack Obama sounds authoritarian to them. You say "public transport should be owned by the state" and they say "you deserve to go to jail, you socialist" (I exaggerate obviously, just to make my point).
They tend to forget that there is a world of opinions to the left of Obama (which, again, is on the right wing in my book), and that those opinions are still compatible with democracy.
Well, no. "Socialism has evolved" is nonsensical. Socialism has a definition so either that's what you want or that's not what you want... Socialism has disappeared from government and from what most "socialist parties" actually seek, which is in fact social democracy.
There are still parties that seek socialism, or groups within parties that overall do not.
> Socialism has a definition so either that's what you want or that's not what you want
So when you go to a movie theater, it's not a movie theater because by definition it is an analog movie being projected in black and white without sound? How could this new digital thing with colors and sound ever be compared to the original movie theater? That's nonsensical. Movie theaters have disappeared decades ago, right?
I know that 99.9% of the people still use the word "movie theater" for the new thing that exists everywhere, but surely they are wrong. Because that's not how language works, is it? Language is about the definition I chose to keep from decades ago, not about the definition that is commonly understood by the people who use the word.
That's how I understand what your understanding of "the definition of a word". In my view, someone calling an iPhone "a phone" is not wrong, even though the iPhone is pretty far from what used to be called a phone.
No, what you're saying is that a circle has "evolved" into a square but it's it's fine to still call it a circle. Of course it isn't.
Again, it seems obvious you do not understand what socialism vs capitalism means, as explained before and for the reasons explained before, as your latest comment is not apt at all and besides the point. I would nicely suggest you have a good read at the Wikipedia pages in English, which look less manipulated that the ones in French (more scrutiny?), or even Marxist stuff if you are up to. Enjoy!
I am perfectly aware of the existence of socialist parties in Europe... Let me get this straight: are you really saying that because there are socialist parties in Europe, the European states are socialists?
Most of the EU states are currently led by liberal/neo-liberal/right-wing parties dude...
I think it's more the Nordic countries which are seen as socialist; the EU as an institution is the kind of light-touch, states are sovereign, "fundamental rights and trade only" focus that Republicans seem to wish the USA federal government was.
Nordic countries are absurdly capitalistic nations, Sweden has one of the biggest wealth inequalities in the world (not income, wealth, the true measure of capital).
Sweden also has one of the freest markets on Earth, even more than the USA.
If you are able to you should really visit Europe, because it really sounds like you have the version presented to you by your favorite media. Reality is very different as the many many comments already point out to you. This is mostly for historic and cultural reasons which is hard to understand if you not actually seen it in practice.
> So you also believe the "socialist parties" aren't actually socialist?
Yep! 90% of the members of PSOE are not actually socialists, they only bear the name of it. Take for example the Democratic Party in Italy (PD), it's member of the PSOE, but it has became mainly "a Catholic-inspired, centrist, catch-all party" [1] with sprinkles of liberal individual rights (mostly LGBTQ stuff).
Liberals are not socialists.
[1] quoting Wikipedia here on the definition of the Christian Democracy party in Italy (DC) that ruled consecutively for over 40 years since the end of WWII whose leftist component merged into PD together with the rightmost component of the former PCI (communist party). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democracy_(Italy))
In the same way that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea isn't Democratic nor People's nor a Republic, yes.
Check their programmes.
> Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems[1] characterised by social ownership of the means of production,[2] as opposed to private ownership.[3][4][5] It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems.[6] Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative,[7][8][9] or employee.[10][11] Traditionally, socialism is on the left wing of the political spectrum.[12] Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, and the structure of management in organizations.[13][14]
Go and find any even remotely mainstream "Socialist" party advocating for anything close to the above. They are unquestionably left leaning, but that means more social policies (for the people, like increasing minimum wage, expanding workers' protections, investing in youth, etc.), not seizing the means of production in any way.
Hell, the last seizing of some of the means of production in France happened under the neoliberal, "neither left nor right" (but in reality centre-right) current president, Macron - STX France (currently and formerly Chantiers de l'Atlantique, one of the biggest shipyards in Europe) and EDF (national electricity provider and producer, and owner of all nuclear power plants in France). Under his predecessor, the socialist Francois Hollande, from the Socialist party, there was only a 12% investment in PSA Group (Peugeot-Citroen, which has since then bought Opel and merged with Fiat-Chrysler to become Stellantis).
Since we are on a technical/scientific site I'll put it in mathematical terms:
implementing social policies is a Necessary But Not Sufficient condition for a Country to be socialist.
There are literally zero countries in the EU that are socialist, they only have ~some~ social policies.
Socialism is not social democracy. Socialism is a economical system where workers own the means of production instead of capital owners.
You do not know the meaning of political terms and are using your own preconceived notions of what they mean to then call a very capitalistic institution (as the EU is) something it's not.
Educate yourself, it will do wonders for you and everyone you interact with.
And so does practically any poll in any EU country, as well as many non-EU countries where people are desperate to get in (be it in the Western Balkans or the Caucasus).
No, Germans quite like the EU. Same as in France, it's that popular and Brexit was so much of a disaster, that the far-right parties stopped talking about leaving the EU and moved to just vague stuff about reforming it.
Socialist?? The EU is still primarily a neoliberalist institution, I can't think of a single socialist reform it upheld. It's all about enforcing privatization of what wasn't yet and fostering economic competition among its members. Are you just throwing words you don't understand?
Regional development, common agricultural policy, European social fund... There are many things that could be considered a bit socialist. All the directives regulating business, competition regulation too... EU is not really classical liberal or nationalist.
and considering the examples you cite, that's obviously a good thing, despite the fact that for most americans 'socialism' aims to be a scarecrow word.
Oh, if your definition of "collective control over the means of production" is as broad as "there exists a governing body which creates and enforces policies which regulate the private sector", then I guess literally every single modern nation state style society is "socialist" in your eyes. I must say that's not the most useful definition, and certainly not what anyone who's a proponent of anything they call "socialism" means by "socialism".
Like "left/right", it's always a question of degree. There is no pure version of any system. I was responding to a comment that seems to think the EU policies have not a trace of socialism in them, which is incorrect.
Edit: and the extent of EU regulations is quite enormous.
No, you are incorrect. There is nothing socialist about the EU. Production, distribution and exchange are not owned by the people. Elected bodies owning them is not socialist.
Tell me more how all the money transfers are neoliberal? How the “creating of european idea” is neoliberal? How “we must have minimal taxes in europe” is neoliberal. Industrial subsidies for car and aeroplane companies. Compulsary social and retirement policies. In EU socialism is the norm, everything outside is branded almost extreme right. And right is a bad word in EU. If you take right and cut out russian support, keep taxes and less money distribution, promote personal tesponsibility you are still extreme right.
> If you take right and cut out russian support, keep taxes and less money distribution, promote personal tesponsibility you are still extreme right.
That describes to a T the French party "Les Republicains", and nobody calls them far right. So no, you need the extremist "migrants bad" with zero nuance, heavy doses of populism with no foundation, promises of more money distribution (in France, the Front National is promising raising the minimum wage, bringing back the wealth tax, and other such populist "give money to the real people" things), and yes, lots of Russian support and money and dicksucking, and you get a classic European far-right party.
> In EU socialism is the norm
What is your definition of socialism? Considering the EU hasn't nationalised/EU-lised anything to control the means of production, I can guarantee you it's wrong.
The EU is neoliberal in many aspects, like the railway packages, strict rules on country subsidies into many sectors (countries can no longer just bail out their national industries when they fail). But it isn't only neoliberal. Consumer protections with warranties, GDPR, Digital Markets and Services Acts, etc. aren't strictly neoliberal.
I don't know why anyone would think something as complex as the EU can be described with a political label. Hell, most parties can barely be described with a single label, let alone a multi-government entity with many institutions and responsible for some of the greatest progress and unity the continent has ever seen.
> in France, the Front National is promising raising the minimum wage, bringing back the wealth tax, and other such populist "give money to the real people" things
If there's no plan on how to finance such things in one of the countries with the highest public spending as % of GDP, relatively high budget deficits, a high debt to GDP ratio, slipping credit rating, monstrous pension obligations and impending demographic slowdown... Yes they are. Empty bullshit being said because it's popular and easy to be said. No substance, no real plan, no real solutions.
Because it's little more than xenophobia, which has always been extremist.
You don't want people with radically different value systems being allowed to migrate without making efforts to integrate themselves? Sure, say so. That's a reasonable position that can be debated. Maybe you'd be OK with asylum seekers fleeing for their lives, maybe not, to be discussed.
You don't want anyone different to come to the country? That's xenophobia, and considering the demographic challenges facing the EU, stupid. And of course the funny thing is that most of the people espousing those extremist views and voting for the "migrants bad" parties are living in the countryside where there are practically no migratns and everyone knows everyone else. Cities, where those migrants (be they Afghanis or Ukrainians who ran for their lives, Sudanese looking for a better life) are actually concentrated, are markedly pro-much more open to migrants parties.
Welcoming all migrants can work in countries with no social net like US in their biggest boom. Come and work. EU countries are stretched and more and more people with low to no skills are gonna be really hard on the budgets. They cant even guarantee to pay people born there nice retirement in 30 years.
Are you under the impression that anyone can just come into an EU country and start receiving aid?
There are programs to help asylum seekers (people literally running for their lives) settle in, but there are lots of criteria to fill to be able to claim that, and it takes weeks to years of processing to validate your claims you're indeed running for your life and there's an actual risk for your life.
I understand that. But the migrants also need housing and food while they wait. I am absolutely for some kind of immigration. But not for "everybody that comes here will stay". And absolutely for trying to engage people into european society. Fundamental islam is a real thing. Second generation of immigrants is getting radicalizes and european union needs to do something with it. And if somebody accuses me on hating islam, i dont like all religions the same.
Depends on the definition of socialism. For me the flow through retirement is socialist. The healthcare that forces people to pay money to non functioning system based on their income is socialist.
> The healthcare that forces people to pay money to non functioning system based on their income is socialist.
Non functioning? All EU countries with public healthcare score better than the US in the healthcare rankings (and life expectancy), by a good measure. And some of them are the best in the world. This [1] is just one source, you can find multiple ones with the same conclusion.
Norway has huge oil reservers, Swiss healthcare is basically private. We could go deeper. NHS in UK is in the shambles for example.
Switzerland has universal health care, regulated by the Swiss Federal Law on Health Insurance. There are no free state-provided health services, but private health insurance is compulsory for all persons residing in Switzerland (within three months of taking up residence or being born in the country).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland#:~:t...).
Europe is constantly pushing for privatization of public sectors such as rail, electricty... Subsidies would be socialist if the people owned the companies that received them, which is absolutely not the case. All the money transfers and other policies you talk about are only carried out in the sole goal of evening out a playing field for the european private sector to compete in.
You are right in that it is not exactly neoliberal, I believe the correct term is "ordoliberal".
> Utterly revolting how the EU has become an authoritarian and socialist project expanding its power over EU citizens and countries.
Sounds word by word like a Nigel Farage speech campaigning for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.
It seems that his populist speech lingers a bit after achieving his goal, Brexit.
Nevertheless, years after such an event, there can be no doubt that he did not have the citizens' interests at heart. Of course, neither he nor the other parrots who spread that kind of discourse have faced the consequences of their vile actions.
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