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Comment by onestone | Hacker News Reader

Apparently the EU Parliament is trolling Theresa May.

Not just EP, but the Council and Commission as well, since they initiated the legislative process. That means the 27 governments are also behind it, at the moment. This is very surprising to me - no government is free of authoritarian elements, especially in centralistic States like France, Hungary, Italy or Spain. Their unilateral disarmament would be peculiar.

I don't see this proposal going all the way, to be honest, it seems too idealistic. I expect it will be perverted into its opposite, e.g. justification for "review methods" that states could apply to "check if your encryption is secure", which would result in compromising that very security. Remember that EU law is adapted at individual state level; for generic stuff like this, there is plenty of space for interpretation by national legislators.

As a supporter of the EU concept, I think this is dangerous territory for the Union, at a time when its popularity is pretty low. I hope I'll be proven wrong.

"27 governments" aren't behind this. Members of the EP from 27 states are behind this, but in many cases, they have nothing in common with the actual government of the country. So little voters care about and participate in the election (often less than 25%) it's easy to win - and the parties that participate in the government don't care at all, thus making EP election the ideal target for otherwise irrelevant parties.

The turnout in the most recent European elections was 43%. The makeup of the EP doesn't support your claim either. It is dominated by essentially the same parties that rule on a national level.

That's true for the western part of the union, but it's very different in the eastern part. In the Czech Republic, it's been 31%, 28% and 28% (since 2004), and our voters are participating the most compared to other eastern states.

43% is the average across the EU. It's not surprising that it takes a while for new members to fully participate.

You are mistaken about Czech turnout though. It's the second lowest of all members: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/elections2014-results/en/turno...

[Edit] For comparison: Turnout in the 2014 US mid-term elections was 36%. In the most recent presidential elections it was 55%.

It's also true for other countries in the eastern part of the union.

> "27 governments" aren't behind this.

I suggest you read up on your EU constitutional law. The Commission is nominated by governments (and confirmed by MEPs); the Council is directly composed by national heads of state.

Commission and Council (i.e. national governments, all together) introduce legislation, which is then amended or rejected by the European Parliament (the body built with that election you mention). The first move is always from governments. In 99% of cases, when there is bad EU law, it's because governments wanted it.

EP doesn't introduce legislation, only amend and vote on it, so there is commission behind proposal.

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