Hacker News Reader

Comment by ar-jan | Hacker News Reader

It's because there is a strong tendency for EU overregulation. This one sounds good to me in principle (I don't know about the implementation).

Recent examples: it will be illegal to have voluntary firefighters. In the Netherlands, 80% of firefighers are volunteers. The current system works very well, and this is new regulation is likely to cause massive problems. It will be impossible the maintain current quality, because it is impossible to maintain a huge paid workforce just for occasional large incidents. For example, in a recent large fire there were over a hundred firefighters active, most of them volunteers. Moreover many volunteers do it for fun, or to contribute something to society, and do not want to be a paid firefighter, or would not be able to because of their main job. Thanks, EU.

Another one: EU wants to register every single chicken. Not just commercial chicken farms, every single chicken would have to be registered, even for hobbyists having a few chickens running around in their back yard.

View on HN

A quick Google search tells me that the "new regulation" re firefighters you're talking about is a recent court ruling about the working time directive from 2003. Volunteer firefighters are a huge part of the firefighter workforce in many EU countries including Germany (97%) and France (78%) so I highly doubt what you're insinuating will happen.

I read about it in Dutch news, which also mentioned that other countries also have volunteer firefighting forces, but I didn't look up their numbers. Various officials here said it would have big implications and keeping the system as it is would be impossible. So some law or regulation would have to change. Incidentally this is a good example of why EU regulations can be so problematic: if this example is fixed, it will be because many countries have large volunteer forces so the problem cannot be ignored. But if the regulation happens to affect just one or a few smaller countries you might be out of luck. Not everything can be regulated centrally without unintended consequences.

Speaking as a Brit

Read the replies to your original post, there was no new regulation, whatever you read in the news was made up. In the british press there is a constant stream of fabricated stories about EU "regulations" that take a cursory google to disprove.

It's so bad in the UK that some years ago the EU set up a "British Euromyths" blog, to highlight all the Daily Mail type "EU about to ban breathing!" stories. The pieces are mainly from the expected suspects.

https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/

No idea if there is a Netherlands equivalent.

It's so bad that the majority of people from deprived areas of the UK, places neglected by their own national government but do receive millions in EU funding still believed they would be better off leaving the EU. It's total madness.

There's plenty of generalizations and simplifications of issues, and in a few newspapers the tone is generally more critical of the EU. But most mainstream newspapers are actually quite pro-EU in general.

Speaking as a Dutchman. The news that was reported here was accurate. My reply on another comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21124780:

1. I should have said "impossible" rather than illegal (although the consequence is still that it would be, well, illegal under EU law). That's the implication of what was reported in the Netherlands. For those who read Dutch, see e.g. https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/brandweer-dreigt-vrijwilligers-.... and https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/vrijwilligers-b....

2. I was mainly talking about about (the effect of) overregulation in general, I did not say there is a specific regulation re volunteer firefighters. But if the implied problems become reality, it would be because of interpretation of laws and regulations.

Yes, there was a lawsuit in Belgium. And no, that's not the main issue that was reported here. Lawyers conducted a study of the practice of Dutch firefighting on behalve of the Ministry of Justice and Security, and concluded that the way our system is set up contradicts EU law. The main issue is that volunteer firefighters do almost exactly the same work as paid firefighers.

3. That's point 1.

4. This is exactly my more general concern about the EU: unintended consequences are inevitable when you are centralizing laws and regulations to the most detailed levels for over two dozen countries with very different contexts. There are plenty of EU laws and regulations for which I think the intent is very sensible, but where implementation can be problematic, or problematic for specific subsets of the regulation, or specific countries/regions.

5. I never said they happened, I said "will". Perhaps I should have said "may" since the problem might still be addressed somehow. But even if it is adressed, in the case of the Netherlands a massive change would be necessary. According to lawyers and law professors who have studied the problem in the Dutch context.

So no, not misinformation. I just worded it somewhat imprecise.

But there is no issue really, just a case where the states didn't respect EU laws that they themselves wanted.

The EU law states no worker can work more than X hours a week, for the health benefit of the citizens. A court ruled that the volunteer firefighters time counts as working time. So now we need to include that in how we make them work when we need.

Knowing my country (France), I'm sure it will be some sort of "the hours worked as voluntary firefighter are not due to their other employer, but will still be paid probably by the state or by the employer but with according tax deduction", something like this.

So now comes a choice; either we think it's unhealthy for people to work more than 42 hours a week (and we did since we voted this in), and then it makes sense. Or we don't, and then we're free to change the regulation. Or we think some form or work shouldn't count against that limit (such as public work for emergency services) and we can update the regulation.

Saying we shouldn't make regulation because sometime we may have to redefine more precisely some of its details when the situation arise makes very little sense to me.

But that's not quite the problem we appear to have here in NL. There's a law whose basic intent is that you cannot use volunteer workers for what should actually be paid work. Here volunteers do almost exactly the same work as professional firefighters and therefore they should be paid employees under this law. Applying this to volunteer firefighters is an unintended consequence, but it's obligatory.

> Saying we shouldn't make regulation because sometime we may have to redefine more precisely some of its details when the situation arise makes very little sense to me.

My concern is both practical and philosophical: our firefighting system will very likely be reorganized; this is going to cost a lot of money and time, volunteers are likely to quit if things are no longer easily combined with their job, quality would almost certainly drop (since it's already high), and then, hopefully, in the end we still have a functioning firefighting service. But all that work will not actually solve any problem, it's just for complying with regulations.

On the philosphical end: the complexity and the number of laws and regulations keeps growing, and so does the scale at which they're applied. I think such unintended consequences will keep coming up at the local level, far from where they originated centrally, and in the long run it will be increasingly difficult to solve these problems.

But the political/legal situation is still the same really.

We have this law to avoid abusing "free" people as volunteer, which eg in France is important against lots of things like illegal immigrant ("I don't pay you but you can sleep there !"), and to ensure egality (in France we have an even stricter law which is basically "for the same work, same salary", to avoid discrimination against various ethnics, gender, age ... difference).

If you / the NL people are saying this cause an issue, and the law should be changed to, for exemple, not include free work done for emergency public services, then it simply means we need to add a precision to the law to cover that specific case.

And if it isn't done, then it means "all those affected countries" either didn't push for it or failed to convince the whole of the EU to change the regulation.

EU regulation are done by EU MPs all coming from their respective EU countries to improve the situation there, they don't implement things randomly in a vacuum. If the regulation needs to be adapted, it's easy, given those who want it can make a case for it.

My fundamental concern is the scale mismatch. If you notice the problem locally, it can be very hard and potentially impossible to address it locally, because EU-wide regulations increasingly take precedence.

That is one of the reasons for the EU being so complicated. To counter the effect there is not only the Parliament which has to approve a new rule, but also the EU Council, the later in some areas even unanimously.

There are different blockers in the system so that a (slim) majority can't simply overrule a minority.

It’s not even a regulation. It was a court that decided on this matter.

Courts don't decide policy, they interpret the law.

Yes it's due to laws and regulations. It's all part of EU labour law. See my other comment.

According to [1], what happened was that volunteers were recognised as workers by ECJ and as such their time on call at home can count towards their weekly worked time. An older directive (2003) sets out a maximum working time which I am sure nobody is complaining about, and if anything in many member states people claim to be working to many hours. Individuals can and could previously opt-out of these limits. Nothing new under the sun here.

It is also clear that no "regultation" is being planned.

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2019-00020...

> EU overregulation

Most of that tends to be misinformation.

For example:

> it will be illegal to have voluntary firefighters

Nope. Not even close. A firefighter in Belgium sued because he said that on-call time is work, and the court decided in his favour. This caused concern that generalising this could cause problems. However, the EU was aware of these concerns and apparently this case cannot be generalised in this way:

https://www.ctif.org/news/die-eu-arbeitszeitrichtlinie-infor...

I don't know how it works in Belgium, but in Germany, the voluntary firefighters (which is almost all of them), simply continue to be paid by their main employers when active. The employer can then recover this from the responsible government organisation.

For this, the application of the working time directive changes...nothing. Also for standby times during working hours, for which the employee is working for his main employer, so again no change. I am guessing (but not sure) that the issue is on-call time when the employee is not working for his main employer.

People have raised concerns that this might have the potential to negatively affect volunteer firefighting. But as far as I know, nothing has actually happened, and apparently nothing will.

So as so often, almost complete misinformation:

1. The EU will not make it "illegal" to have volunteer firefighters.

2. It was actually a lawsuit, not a regulation.

3. It was about working time, not about making volunteer firefighters illegal.

4. So at most it would have been an unintended consequence of a good and necessary regulation.

5. However, these unintended consequences were only imaginary, they never happened.

6. The EU bodies were fully aware of the importance of volunteer firefighters.

7. Had there been unintended consequences, they would have mostly been of the formal variety that affect local authorities.

> every single chicken [..] registered, even for hobbyists having a few chickens

Also nope, only if you have 50 chickens or more.

https://www.tsk-bw.de/Melde_Beitragspflicht/Wer_muss_melden....

Thanks for the background regarding the firefighters.

As for the chickens: you are linking to what look like current regulations in Germany. At issue is the Animal Health Regulation (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:L:201...) which will be in effect from 21 April 2021.

There is a statement that there should be exceptions for pet animals, but these exceptions did not make it into the regulation for chickens. The Netherlands argued for this but did not find support, and is currently trying to arrange for exceptions. It is not fake news.

There's nothing in this that requires pet keepers to register their animals. There's no specific mention of chickens (a few mention of "chicks or hatchlings of other species")

If for some reason you believe "obligation of operators to register establishments" would apply to individual pet owners (I don't believe it does, as earlier in the document "pet keepers" are separate from "operators") - there's a clause to allow exceptions: "Member States may exempt from the registration requirement certain categories of establishments posing an insignificant risk"

The only thing in the entire document that applies to "pet keepers" is ... [to] be responsible for:

(i) the health of kept animals;

(ii) prudent and responsible use of veterinary medicines, without prejudice to the role and responsibility of veterinarians,

(iii) minimising the risk of the spread of diseases;

(iv) good animal husbandry;

There are some further restrictions to do with moving pet animals between member states

I will admit I did not read all 212 pages of the regulation. I doubt you did.

I'm trusting here that the Dutch minister of agriculture is being accurate in her letter to parliament describing ongoing issues [0].

0: https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/kst-28286-1062.html

(using google translate)

"For example, holders who only have a few pieces of poultry must also comply with requirements for I&R and there will also be obligations for holders of animal species for which no requirements currently exist, such as bees, bumble bees and camel-like animals. The Netherlands has argued against these requirements when drafting these new regulations, but received little support from other member states and the EC. The EC indicated that it can allow Member States to grant exceptions to these obligations."

So it's up to member states if they want to require owners of pet chickens to register them

That's exactly what I was saying with "and is currently trying to arrange for exceptions." The EC could allow exceptions, but they haven't yet actually allowed for them.

Possibly they haven't "yet" actually allowed for them because the regulation isn't "yet" actually in force?

> there should be exceptions for pet animals

OK, so what's the problem? After all, this won't come into effect until about a year and a half from now and it seems that there is agreement that there should be exceptions.

Given that, what makes you certain that there won't be exceptions?

> is currently trying to arrange for exceptions

You seem to be certain that this will not succeed. Why?

> It is not fake news.

Hmm...it's not in effect, there seems to be some agreement that there should be exceptions and exceptions are being worked on. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The problem is that this exception is not currently in place, and that it is still uncertain if it will be possible to implement. The fact that the European Commission has previously disregarded this specific concern despite attempts to have it addressed does not inspire confidence.

I don't know what will happen, but this situation is concerning to many people. Also consider that the news plays a role in policy making (for better or worse), i.e. some added pressure from advocates may help to get the needed exceptions in place.

> this exception is not currently in place

And neither is the regulation.

> this situation is concerning to many people.

That's not the same thing as there being an actual problem.

1. I should have said "impossible" rather than illegal (although the consequence is still that it would be, well, illegal under EU law). That's the implication of what was reported in the Netherlands. For those who read Dutch, see e.g. https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/brandweer-dreigt-vrijwilligers-... and https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/vrijwilligers-b....

2. I was mainly talking about about (the effect of) overregulation in general, I did not say there is a specific regulation re volunteer firefighters. But if the implied problems become reality, it would be because of interpretation of laws and regulations.

3. That's point 1.

5. I never said they happened, I said "will". Perhaps I should have said "may" since the problem might still be addressed somehow. But even if it is adressed, in the case of the Netherlands a massive change would be necessary. According to lawyers and law professors who have studied the problem in the Dutch context.

So no, not misinformation. I just worded it somewhat imprecise.

> I should have said "impossible" rather than illegal

And that would have been still wrong, though with less hyperbole.

> So no, not misinformation. I just worded it somewhat imprecise.

From: there was an isolated case that, had it been generalisable, had the potential for making some aspects of voluntary fire brigades trickier if not addressed, but that actually wasn't generalisable and there was actually no problem at all to "it will be illegal to have voluntary firefighters" is not "somewhat imprecise", it is complete misinformation.

Pretty much the definition of misinformation, in fact.

Because this is exactly how a lot of the misinformation regarding the EU works: you take something highly technical, localised and actually benign, then take 2nd hand reports of people who misunderstood the implications/consequences, take those misunderstandings as fact, extrapolate from them and then ratchet up the hyperbole to 11.

And no, the fact that lawyers did a study doesn't really change any of this. The EU is a political body, and the largest member states have large or almost exclusively voluntary fire-departments. So even if the interpretation were correct, which from all I have seen it is absolutely not, it would simply (a) not be applied and/or (b) changed.

In particular: the working time directive is, as the name says, a directive. This means it just specifies some goal(s) to accomplish, and it is up to the member states to implement national legislation to accomplish those goals. So if they need to carve out exceptions for volunteer fire departments, they can do that.

So yes: "it will be illegal to have voluntary firefighters" is just wrong and not just a slight imprecision, but pure misinformation.

> From: there was an isolated case that, had it been generalisable [...]

I reiterate that the isolated case you're referring to was not the motivation of experts saying the Dutch system will have to be reorganized. Why don't you acknowledge that maybe there is an actual problem here, which perhaps doesn't apply in other contexts? I.e. maybe the German and French volunteer firefighters are organized in such a way that there is no problem?

> ... German and French vs. Dutch

The original claim was "it will be illegal to have voluntary firefighters."

> maybe the German and French volunteer firefighters are organized in such a way that there is no problem?

I sincerely doubt it. Particularly because those concerns apparently were raised in both France and Germany. Anyway, if you can find some evidence that this is the case, please feel free to share.

The chicken thing sounds like over-regulation, but it's already reality for ungulates, and I suspect it's tied into disease control. We really don't want a situation where the national chicken industry is wrecked by an outbreak of bird flu that can't be controlled because we don't know where the chickens are.

On the other hand, one thing the EU is genuinely bad at is the "small operator" exemptions which UK law is generally good at. They very rarely exist in EU law.

The chicken thing can be a large human health issue. It might not seem like they are a heath hazard, but many extremely deadly flu viruses make the chicken human jump.

But small numbers are judged to be low risk, the main health problems have to do with concentrated commercial chicken farming.

Those criticisms are really only informative if you'd also give the purported reasons for implementing those regulations, otherwise we can't weigh them.

(General principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton's_fence)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com