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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

This is what you need a union for. We have a union. So instead of a single country being blacklisted from trade or diplomatic relations due to criticizing China (e.g on human rights) it should just do so as a union. China obviously can’t blacklist the EU.

A good first step would be for the EU to put its foot down and recognize Taiwan as an independent state with full diplomatic relations. As it stands, no individual country dares do it.

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Right, but the point is that (currently) criticizing as a union requires unanimous approval from the member states, and some don't approve.

The article proposes changing the voting scheme to a qualified-majority rather than unanimity, but personally I think it would be better to try to understand why those countries are against it and work to change that, rather than overruling them, which just reinforces the idea that the EU is a tool of a small clique of countries to rule over the others.

Another approach may be to use secret ballot. The issue many states have is that they don't want to be on record supporting something even though they do, for fear of retaliation etc. But if nobody knows how you voted, you can vote how you want to.

That works unless a vote is unanimous. At that point it is obvious what you voted.

You could choose not to publish the tally (or do you mean for votes that are required to be unanimous?), or agree beforehand not to disclose detailed-enough tallies to draw this conclusion (e.g. report only that 2 or fewer nay's were voted, but not whether that number was 0, 1, or 2.)

But more practically: I kind of doubt it matters when the vote is unanimous, because at that point you're in good company, and it's going to be hard for some external entity to blame you all too much (and if they do, it's easier to find backing for your position from all those that voted like you).

Votes are required to be unanimous, so a secret ballot changes nothing for the affirmative, it would only hide who voted against.

that would immediately make me to switch from 'reform the eu' to 'leave the eu', there's nothing worse than a bunch of unaccountable politician twice removed from local issues voting secretly away from our control and ability to retaliate by electing someone else.

You may reconsider after watching this video on why secret ballots (or anonymous voting in general) should be preferred over "voting transparency":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEz__sMVaY

at most I see it as a need to introduce a bill to refund money spent on political campaigns. secret vote at that level doesn't work, it's common for lobbies to spend on both sides to ease a bill trough, so they are interested more on the end result than the single vote, and as such they don't care if the vote is secret or not, only if the final result is favorable.

But if the final result is unfavorable, who do they punish? The entire legislature, including everyone who voted with them? Good luck with that.

Just to note, this would be the European Council, which is made up of national ministers, who are definitely elected.

You may be thinking of the Commission, who can propose legislation and are appointed for five year terms by the Council (following nominations by national governments).

>> but personally I think it would be better to try to understand why those countries are against it and work to change that, rather than overruling them....

Think why US governors vote differently on various foreign policy issues such the Iraq/Afganistan war or the current trade war. Absolute majority is hard to achieve even in the United States.

> US governors vote differently on various foreign policy issues

Not sure if this is sarcasm. American governors govern states. They have zero purview over foreign policy, which is strictly a federal matter.

I think in this case replacing governors with senators may be appropriate and closer to the original intent.

They have influence by using the bully pulpit, talking about it, making plans that are different. See California right now on climate change.

China used political capital to buy off the votes in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Greece so those 3 countries veto any measure that China doesn’t want the EU to develop.

China is smart, not naive. They can bring the EU to their knees with tens of billions of dollars making them completely ineffective due to their huge bureaucracy.

Some country will always take that position because there is economic and diplomatic benefit in taking it.

> China obviously can’t blacklist the EU.

Don't be too sure. Even if not in absolute terms, the scale appears uneven. Still, you are correct that it needs to be at the EU level, if just to protect those that can't afford to stand on principle.

Also, you don't have to go full Taiwanese independence here. Simpler measures towards transparency of Chinese influence/demands would be a much more pragmatic initial step.

EU countries acting unanimously towards China would mean the "predatory exporter" countries would grab the whole cake, the rest would be traditionally losers at their own fault. Only acting individually the countries like e.g. Czechia or even Poland can get a chance to trade with China. The long term negative consequences are irrelevant as this is perspective exceeding the duration of their parliaments' terms of office.

Your assertion of Poland/Czechia not trading with China is easily-provable BS https://tradingeconomics.com/czech-republic/imports-by-count...

I wonder if there are some ulterior motive in the increased amount of anti-EU comments here on this site

Presumably, they meant that Czechia and Poland currently act individually and thus have a chance to trade with China, which they could lose otherwise.

Individually they get the worst deal. Just ask average Joe to do business with a big corporation and see what kind of deal he gets.

Acting as a union Germany, France, and UK would get everything, some hand outs for Spain and Italy, any profits skillfully funeled through Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, and Netherlands. The general population getting low quality tat "Made in China".

Somewhat aside: it's a bit of a shame the netherlands gets the blame in these tax-dodging stories, because the issue is actually that laws differ between countries (i.e. countries with laws identical to the netherlands aren't vulnerable to the tax dodge), and as it so happens, the netherlands' tax system is... not quite as crappy as that of most other countries. Still crappy, mind you. Just not as bad.

I.e. the appropriate solution would be for (e.g., to pick on a particularly bad tax code) the US and germany to simply dump their tax codes wholesale and copy the Netherlands, rather than the converse. Because seriously, some tax codes are just asking to be abused. Plug this hole, wait for the next one...

The cynical side of me doesn't think it's coincidental that the loopholes are so gaping. Oh well.

Right now, industries in Eastern Europe are "not allowed" to trade directly with China, India or Russia. Anything they produce and is sold outside EU must go through German or other western company. Guess where the profits stay.

See also sanctions against Russia: the trade of everyone _except Germany_ went down; overall the trade is the same. Cui bono?

>Right now, industries in Eastern Europe are "not allowed" to trade directly with China, India or Russia

source?

Looks like the fake news production is in full power

Yeah, sure. And the fact that Bulgaria with Hungary cannot have their gas pipeline (South Stream), but Germany can (Nord Stream 2), is just another piece of fake news. Right?

It is certainly not about who will control the trade, everything is just coincidence. Sure thing.

This is such BS. Can you provide evidence?

It is wrong that they can't trade with China. Billions of dollars a month go to China to Europe in trade.

> Cui bono?

Belarus.

The small authoritarian countries in Europe can bring everything down, just like the Irish tax issue. It's worth China bribing small countries to get their way, whether outright or through special deals.

lol, the only truly authoritarian state lying entirely in Europe is Belarus and it is not in EU neither is that small.

Smaller members have a lot of leverage in the EU.

Why would they do that? That sounds like a stupid move causing unnecessary trouble. There's like two countries worldwide who recognise Taiwan as independent, and the US is not among those either.

> This is what you need a union for. We have a union. So instead of a single country being blacklisted from trade or diplomatic relations due to criticizing China (e.g on human rights) it should just do so as a union.

Actually, the union makes it harder to confront china because of the collective nature. It's like if a group of ten people going to the movies vs 10 individuals. The group has to compromise while individuals don't. There is a reason why china is so pro-EU. It's why china wants britain to stay in the EU.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/18...

The EU can't confront china if it is going to hurt greece or one of its members. But norway can because it is free to act on its own interests.

https://thediplomat.com/2016/01/sino-norwegian-relations-5-y...

> China obviously can’t blacklist the EU.

And obviously EU can't blacklist china either.

> As it stands, no individual country dares do it.

A few individual countries do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Taiwan#Ty...

Two dogs can't fight a tiger.

Sure, it's harder to reach a consensus, but it has more power than individual decisions.

Divide and conquer has been tried and tested, it rarely works as well as the "muh sovereignety" people think.

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