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Comment by logifail | Hacker News Reader

>> The decision to tackle the issue was prompted after the Commission launched an online survey. Some 4.6 million Europeans answered the survey — three million of those respondents were from Germany — with 80 percent of them voting to scrap the practice.

At first glance that approach appears to be a deeply flawed way to make policy which affects 28 member states.

What would happen if the commission started asking for more policy-making input from citizens via online surveys?

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> What would happen if the commission started asking for more policy-making input from citizens via online surveys?

They already do. At any given point in there there are multiple ongoing consultations[0]. It actually works fine.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations_en

I can't help but think that citizens giving their views on the

"Public consultation on the Evaluation of the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive"

isn't quite at the same level as getting rid of daylight savings time.

Online surveys are a horrible idea for this kind of information gathering. You have effectively zero idea if the respondents are even in the EU. All it takes is a VPN subscription to completely trash an online survey of this nature.

funny argument. you think it's a horrible idea, propose a flawed way to do it, and debunk it to serve your initial idea. :)

how you do think online voting is done? you really think a simple VPN is enough?

oh, and btw.. I send my tax statement online. let's hope the russians don't have a VPN connection to Switzerland :)

One doesn't even need a VPN -- anyone can submit a response. It's basically on the honor code.

https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations_en

So? It's not a vote, it's a consultation. The idea being that anyone can give their input on the matter so it doesn't matter who is responding. The voting part, if it comes to that, comes later by the European Parliament.

Note that the European Parliament can't initiate legislation[1], and the Council appears to be able to ignore Parliament's opinion.

"The European Parliament may approve or reject a legislative proposal, or propose amendments to it. The Council is not legally obliged to take account of Parliament’s opinion but in line with the case-law of the Court of Justice, it must not take a decision without having received it"

[1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-parliament/en/powers-and...

Note that you quoted the special "Consultation" procedure instead of the ordinary legislative procedure where EP has more power.

According to the page, the consultation procedure "is applicable in a limited number of legislative areas, such as internal market exemptions and competition law".

There seems to be a distinct lack of evidence that the veto powers are actually used, though; the backroom deals are alive and well?

A dearth of legislative vetoes: Why the Council and Parliament have been reluctant to veto Commission legislation http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2016/10/25/a-dearth-of-leg...

Legislative Scrutiny? The Political Economy and Practice of Legislative Vetoes in the European Union https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jcms.12252

Sure. At the same time they provide useful input from real users too. Humans are good at spotting fake from real input on this kind of surveys. In the end it is merely a way of including ideas and details that sometimes are overlooked.

Source: I've supported some of the European Union activities.

Online surveys are a horrible idea for this kind of information gathering

It skews the demographic towards people who spend alot of time online and like to do surveys. Most working people won't have the time or even know it's there. They might as well set policy by which memes get the most likes.

TimeZone McClockFace

It may seem like they're throwing policy to the wind but something to consider is that the events leading up to the assessment of DST, as well as the public consultation on the matter, were down to both citizens initiative and feedback as well as Member States directly appealing to the commission, as Lithuania asked for a review on the matter to take into account regional differences and Finland asked for it to be abandoned all together[0]. The matter is now left for the European Parliament and by extension MEPs from individual Member States to vote on, all in all it's like an extended referendum that then needs to be voted on in Parliament, everybody from citizens to elected officials get a say.

It's also not too concerning that Germany ended up with 3 million of the citizens consultation vote, it's only a 4% participation rate for Germany and while 25 other Member States only had a participation rate of less than 1% those that voted were overwhelmingly (>75%) in favour of abolishing DST, with only Cyprus, Greece, and Malta being on the fence (with around 50/50%)[1]. It's also the highest amount of responses so far of any public consultation.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations/2018-summertime-arra...

[1] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-5302_en.htm

>> while 25 other Member States only had a participation rate of less than 1% those that voted were overwhelmingly (>75%) in favour of abolishing DST

(Bearing in mind the historical low in the 2014 European elections) how many EU citizens actually knew there was a consultation about this?

In any case, asking for responses to a survey if respondants think "X" should be abolished looks to be pretty much the textbook case for selection bias.

Everything still has to go through the EU Parliament, no need to panic...

> Everything still has to go through the EU Parliament, no need to panic...

As if the EU Parliament has never voted for half-baked ideas that have disproportionate impact for its member states?

Half-baked or not, the point is that everyone gets a say

...then it goes to trilogue[1] for some horse-trading behind closed doors, after which the Council can do whatever it likes[2]?

[1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ordinary-legislative-procedure...

[2] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-parliament/en/powers-and...

Why don’t the countries just decide for themselves. Why should the EU matter on this?

Because some times, when there's a way A and a way B, it's better if all are doing B, rather than some A and some B, even if A is better than B.

Better for whom?

Because EU members, when they joined, signed away some rights for the privilege of being part of the EU, since you know, EU membership comes with a ton of benefits.

Some of these rights that have been delegated to the EU are economical, and time zone management probably falls in the EU jurisdiction.

And, as the other poster mentioned, standardization is good.

I suspect the alternative would be to simply not have the online poll, without anything replacing it. That's likely how it was in the 90s.

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