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Comment by YeGoblynQueenne | Hacker News Reader

I think you're implying that the GDPR is a money-grabbing scheme that the poor, cash-strapped EU pulled to fill its coffers with much needed cash.

Well, the EU is the second largest world economy, by GDP. Maybe some destitute developing world nation might need such a trick to bring in some cash. The EU? Not so much.

>> Do you think that is a coincidence?

What is certainly an amazing coincidence is that this kind of legislation was passed in the EU and not, say, the US, China, or Saudi Arabia, or some other nation with their impeccable human rights record. It's almost as if the EU is actually trying to protect the rights of its citizens.

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I think you're implying that the GDPR is a money-grabbing scheme that the poor, cash-strapped EU pulled to fill its coffers with much needed cash.

The EU as a whole is the world’s second largest economy. However, the GDPR is up for unique enforcement strategies and legal interpretations in the courts of 28 different EU countries. Having users intentionally set up a company to be subject to fines under such a broadly written law is a trivial matter.

Picture this: A local government attorney simply looks for technical violations of GDPR according to their own country’s strict interpretation of it that even the corporation themselves couldn’t have envisioned. Then they simply have a government agent sign up for the site and take screenshots as proof of the “violation” that the specific country has invented. They put the matter in front of a patriotic local judge who is aware of how much his town could use a new park and is tired of reading about how rich US internet entrepreneurs are getting. Boom, instant millions - they might even name the town’s new park after the judge.

The poor EU countries will use this to suck up as much revenue as they can from what to them are faceless US corporations. The larger ones will use this to give local competitors a leg up by fining international competitors to death. It’s a smart strategy I suppose, but as with most heavy-handed government attempts to control and exploit the free market, it is quite likely to backfire.

The final arbiter of EU law is the court at Strasbourg. US companies are free to take up the matter with the Court, if they don't like the way particular countries spin the GDPR.

I assume next we'll be talking about Strasbourg judges pocketing a cut of the fines imposed on Facebook etc?

Strasbourg court does not override local highest courts, they have different kind of work to do - they override laws that are against EU regulations. Strasbourg court is there to determine if an implementation of a regulation is in line and might overrule it (the law), but if it is in line, then they will not (and can not) help the company at all. And since GDPR is very broad, it's very easy to come up with absurdly strict laws that are perfectly in line with the regulation, and even the poorest EU governments have an extreme abundance of legal resources compared to even the biggest companies. Strasbourg court is not the highest court instance (that's the local highest/constitutional court), there is no such thing in the EU, the EU is not a state.

The way it goes is that cases cannot be appealed directly to the ECJ, rather the local courts can refer questions of EU law to the ECJ at their discretion.

That normally happens when a case has been appealed all the way to the highest national court. So for this little money-grabbing scheme we're discussing to work out, the higher courts of -some? all? many?- member states of the EU must all be in on it. This, in a region of the world with some of the lowest corrpution globally.

I don't want to say the words "conspiracy theory" but that's where this whole discussion has been heading to, from the get go.

I'm not supporting this "conspiracy theory", I'm just saying that the Strasbourg court isn't an "ordinary" highest court like it is in other parts of the world or within local jurisdictions.

If the local implementation is in line with the regulation (and as I said, GDPR is extremely broad and allows extremely strict implementations), the Strasbourg court will say that it's perfectly OK - there is no need for other countries to be in on it. They might feel like it's bad, but they can do nothing, their job is to judge whether it's against the regulation or not, nothing else. If they wish to change it, they have to go through the usual route of gaining support in EU commission and EU parliament - and that change will not be retroactive.

What you're saying would be needed if the strict implementation was against the regulation - then it would require a change of the regulation and yes, that needs cooperation of other countries; but the regulation already is broad, there is no need to change it if someone wanted to make this "conspiracy theory" a reality.

And lastly, we're speaking about money making schemes of the poorest or most indebted EU governments, you're talking about low corruption, but in these countries, it's the exact opposite - they have much higher corruption indexes than the average: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index - see stats of e.g. Macedonia, Greece, Italy.

Macedonia is not in the EU, and it will not be allowed in until it resolves its name dispute with Greece and sorts out its finances and political issues.

So we're talking about malicious action by higher court judges in Italy and Greece, specifically and only in those two countries? Or are there more countries that have high enough corruption that their higher order judges might think to make a bit on the side by applying the GDPR too broadly?

How many poor EU countries are we talking about here? And which ones exactly? Greece, Italy- who else?

I'm not sure why you're talking about judges making money on the side when the original "conspiracy theory" was about governments making money, not about corrupt people making money for themselves. We're talking about action by a government against a corporation. I'm not even sure why are we talking about corruption, this has nothing to do with it.

This is not about judges applying GDPR. The lawmakers will apply it, and then the state could sue a corporation for breaking laws. Local highest court will then eventually look into the intent of the local implementation and see that yes, this was the intent - and the corporation will need to pay up, because the court can't change laws, they can only cancel them in a few special cases (specifically if a law is ruled unconstitutional by a majority of the country's constitutional judges). The corporation then has an opportunity to go to Strasbourg, but since GDPR is very broad, its chances would be very slim - and most probably none.

About Makedonia - you're right. Croatia is entering the EU though.

>> The lawmakers will apply it, and then the state could sue a corporation for breaking laws.

The GDPR is a directive- it doesn't need to be passed into national law.

Are you talking about national laws that implement regulations similar to, but distinct to the GDPR?

>> I'm not sure why you're talking about judges making money on the side when the original "conspiracy theory" was about governments making money, not about corrupt people making money for themselves.

For the government to make money, the judges will need to find against the various companies. But why will the judges sit idly by and watch the government making money out of a racket they themselves make possible, without asking for a cut?

Or, to be more precise- what is the incentive for the judges to do the government's favour and interpret the GDPR in the broad manner required for the conspiracy to work?

>> About Makedonia - you're right. Croatia is entering the EU though.

So it's three countries- Italy, Greece and Croatia? Is that right?

> The GDPR is a directive- it doesn't need to be passed into national law.

Not true, it's not optional.

> Are you talking about national laws that implement regulations similar to, but distinct to the GDPR?

The GDPR is a directive - it sets sort of a framework that the local implementation have to be based upon. It sets some boundaries, but in case of GDPR, the boundaries are very broad (compared to other directives).

> For the government to make money, the judges will need to find against the various companies. But why will the judges sit idly by and watch the government making money out of a racket they themselves make possible, without asking for a cut?

No. The public prosecutor will fight (and for these guys, it's about the ideology that the law must be followed, most of the time), the judge will just... judge. Their job is to judge whether someone follows the law, they would be doing their job. Are judges (or public prosecutors) asking for cuts from compensations to road crash victims?

> Or, to be more precise- what is the incentive for the judges to do the government's favour and interpret the GDPR in the broad manner required for the conspiracy to work?

None, because that's not their job and no one is asking them to do that. It's the lawmaker's job to implement the directive and the output of that job is a law - and judge's job is to judge whether a person (legal or not) follows the law - as in the local implementation, not the GDPR directive itself.

This works like this: Countries are required to implement EU directives into their local laws, but the directive itself is not a law - if the country doesn't implement a directive, even if someone violates it (inside the country, cross-border is another issue), the company will not be persecuted (but the government will be - by the EU).

> So it's three countries- Italy, Greece and Croatia? Is that right?

I don't know, it's not my "conspiracy theory". I'm just talking about the inner workings of the EU and have said that not every EU country is pristine clean. But I suppose you could add some of the Baltic states, Romania, Hungary and maybe Poland (if they continue their way down with PiS). We will have to see what happens in Slovakia, for a while it looked really bad but now it seems like they're back on track. In the Czech Republic, the German/Austrian corporate owners wouldn't allow it.

>>> The GDPR is a directive- it doesn't need to be passed into national law.

>> Not true, it's not optional.

Actually, I was wrong. The GDPR is not a directive, it's a regulation (the R in the name is for "Regulation"). As such it requires no national legislation to be passed and is immediately applicable in all member states:

A regulation is a legal act of the European Union[1] that becomes immediately enforceable as law in all member states simultaneously.[2][3] Regulations can be distinguished from directives which, at least in principle, need to be transposed into national law. Regulations can be adopted by means of a variety of legislative procedures depending on their subject matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_(European_Union)

So it seems like the conspiracy theory is dead in the water. The local governments can't legislate as they wish and the local judges can't interpret as they want. I hope we're all happy now that justice won't be perverted?

>> I don't know, it's not my "conspiracy theory". I'm just talking about the inner workings of the EU and have said that not every EU country is pristine clean. But I suppose you could add some of the Baltic states, Romania, Hungary and maybe Poland (if they continue their way down with PiS). We will have to see what happens in Slovakia, for a while it looked really bad but now it seems like they're back on track. In the Czech Republic, the German/Austrian corporate owners wouldn't allow it.

OK, it's not your conspiracy theory- but all this is wild speculation and it is your wild speculation. There is absolutely no reason why you would expect the countries you list to do the kind of things you say they would. And these are not the "inner workings of the EU". It's all just fantasies.

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