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Comment by conradk | Hacker News Reader

Frexit seems to be coming ever closer. Le Pen got 35% in 2017, pro-frexit parties are flourishing in France. EU has got to be careful. It's doing good things (free roaming, which as citizen who has family in both France and Germany, I highly appreciate) and the GDPR, which seems to force companies to think more about privacy.

But if Github's phrasing accurately represents what EU wants to do with online sharing, then I feel like this change is a step in the wrong direction, restricting privacy to make big-corps even richer than they already are.

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It must be increasingly frustrating for anyone in Brussels if every opponent of any legislation always starts with threatening the whole idea of European cooperation. “Do anything I disagree with and I’ll vote for the fascists in the next election” really isn’t constructive. The accusation of being on the side of big business is also insincere, as exemplified by your two examples of recent legislation that quite clearly side with consumers over large businesses.

Even this legislation, while misguided, is actually aimed at large businesses (mostly YouTube) while the beneficiaries (publishers and artists) are rather small, comparatively.

Putting the "fascist!" comment aside, what alternatives are there than the threat of breaking from the EU if every legislation seems to* head toward a US style federation?

Think of it like the SOPA/PIPA/whatever fight: You manage to barely resist some bill from being enacted into law but then just a few months/years later another version of the same law is proposed.

*: from the perspective of someone

There are a few political parties that call for a reform of the EU without breaking up. I'll try to vote for one of them.

It's clear that the EU needs serious fixing, and German politicians/Brussels technocrats aren't up to the task because they don't care.

Unfortunately, at the time being, these reform parties (mostly social democrats, but not exclusively, and not of the "old kind" of social democrats) aren't big, because the emotional way to deal with the crisis is "To hell with them, let's roll-back to nation-states so we can take over control". Unfortunately, we'll bitterly find out that breaking up won't solve the problem. We'll lose all the benefits of being able to lobby together for a better solutions, and still suffer from all the problems of the EU, even without being in it, because the big institutions won't be stopped by border checks..

> every opponent of any legislation always starts with threatening the whole idea of European cooperation

Well, nothing else really works.

The European parliament in general tends to be fairly good on these issues, but it's not in control of the agenda and the whole system is very vulnerable to being captured by industry groups. It's inherently difficult for the public to participate and there's seldom any discussion in the press while legislation is underway.

There's also no recognition of or exemption for small businesses in EU legal thinking. It's one of the things that the UK tends to do fairly well, but EU law sort of assumes that businesses start at 100 employees with multi-million-Euro turnover and can afford compliance.

Unfortunately you don't get heard otherwise. Commission members have explicitly stated that they do not serve the citizens of the EU. Oettinger for example is notorious of only meeting lobbyists.

Consumer friendly regulations come only into play if it doesn't hurt European big companies. GDPR hurts the big new economy companies in the US far more than the EU companies, for one. Free roaming is also in corporate interest. Big industry lobbyists lament in a regular fashion about too little migration.

> Commission members have explicitly stated that they do not serve the citizens of the EU.

See, that’s just completely unbelievable.

> Free roaming is also in corporate interest. Big industry lobbyists lament in a regular fashion about too little migration.

It’s somewhat funny that you’d associate “roaming” with what I can only presume are imaginary hordes of immigrant scavenging the countryside.

But, in this case, it was referring to mobile phone “roaming”. Something European telecoms taught with all the might of their lobbying power.

(Oettinger is an idiot, I give you that)

>See, that’s just completely unbelievable.

I was referring to this http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/i-didn-t-think-ttip-coul... article, which I had remembered incorrectly but the money quote is I do not take my mandate from the European people by Malmström.

Good one for the roaming I totally misunderstood that. I admit this is beneficial for citizens and against interests of Telcos. However many companies (especially big ones) operate throughout EU and have frequent travels from their employees so there may have been a bit of lobbyism at play here as well. But I concede that it is a rather weak argument.

No, the FN was the biggest loser of the election. Marine Le Pen showed to the entire country and her own electors that she's totally not fit for any government position. The FN is dead (even with its name change), it has not even credibility on what was it's main selling point a few years ago: immigration. Also while MLP advocated for exiting EU and euro, that's not something voters want: they actually vote for her in spite of that.

EU may have a somewhat bad reputation amongst some part of the population, the majority if far wanting to quit it.

>Frexit seems to be coming ever closer.

All the polls are showing EU citizens are much positive about the EU after the Brexit referendum. Even Greek citizens -- probably the most Eurosceptic -- prefer the EU compared to a few years ago.

What your saying isn't backed up by what polling data is saying.

The Italian election (earlier this month) was won by a eurosceptic party. (Or at least they won the most seats but still have to form a coalition)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/05/italy-turns-ba...

> But if Github's phrasing accurately represents what EU wants to do

It doesn't. It's just a proposal. Not all proposals become law and this one has "not gonna make it" written all over it.

Every few months an article gets to the top of HN claiming "EU IS GOING TO LEGISLATE TABS VS SPACES CODE STYLE" or approved names for your dog or maximum amount of light bulbs you can carry for personal use or some other really dumb shit.

Invariably it turns out it's not a law yet, but a proposal. Which, due to the EU parliament's rather open law-making process, are immediately available online in 26 languages. A closer reading of the proposal then invariably exposes one of the following: a.) It's a theoretical conclusion that could be drawn from this proposal but is in no way how the law is supposed to be applied and will very clearly thrown out of court if you'd try. or b.) It's a proposal that it written by someone who has no subject matter knowledge, who has been clearly instructed by some lobbyist, who is adamant to defy every expert's opinion on their proposal, or who is just generally a loony who happened to make it into the 751-person parliament. No one is going to vote for their proposal.

Obviously when a proposal like this makes it to the floor that's scary, but it's a side effect of democracy. Some people buy into the entertainment industry's shrieks that technology is killing them (even though they're doing better than ever) and some of the people that buy into it happen to be MEPs.

It's a problem that exists in every legislature in the world, and the only way to fight this is by taking an active role in your country/union's politics.

> It's a theoretical conclusion that could be drawn from this proposal but is in no way how the law is supposed to be applied and will very clearly thrown out of court if you'd try.

I history of selective enforcement of laws (especially when using them as leverage to plead guilty on another charge) in the US has taught me that overreaching laws are a bad thing. The ones in power will, given time, always take advantage of poorly worded laws.

Free roaming and peace. The small things..

The peace was due to Nato, not the EU.

Both.

The EU bound counties together through trade and NATO protected against external threats.

Internal/external. So presumably there would be a higher risk of France, Germany and Britain going to war with each other if it wasn't for a trade agreement and customs union?

Despite them all being NATO members, unable to by treaty, with the whole NATO organisation geared up to enforce that?

How exactly would your scenario play out? I'm genuinely curious.

The first precursor of the EU was the European Coal and Steel Community [1]. It had the express purpose of putting control over coal and steel under supranational control, thereby making war between the members materially impossible.

It's also important to note that NATO does not provide prosperity (that was the goal of the EEC through closer trade and cooperation). So it does absolutely nothing to prevent the rise of extremist movements that could cause a repeat of the 1930s. There is also nothing it can do to prevent a member from quitting, just like Germany quit the League of Nations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...

The economic structure of the EU provides incentives to avoid conflict.

Worth noting that two NATO members (Greece and Turkey) have had deaths from a not-quite shoot out http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/05/23/greece.crash/. Interesting also that Turkey isn't an EU member, and counties like Germany and France have had as least as much a history of conflict as Greece/Turkey have.

Exactly. When the EU falls apart, Germany will immediately invade France & Poland and nuke London.

And once again it's a stupid copyright law that is going to ruin everything.

I've never seen a copyright law so far that isn't downright draconian and authoritarian and with a huge potential for unintended consequences and a lot of collateral damage (even if the authors' intentions were "good").

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