Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grossgliederung_Europas-e...

"4. UPCA is violating the “rule of law” (TFEU Art2), the EPO cannot be brought to court for maladministration"

They're pretty much opposite sides of the political spectrum in UK. Where are they anything other than that?

However they're primarily just groupings of like-minded national parties.

The EU has what's called a "political party at European level", there are 10 of these registered and a few more that don't meet the criteria to register.[0]

Most of these parties - and in particular the biggest two, the EPP[1] and PES[2] - don't allow individuals to become members.

Instead their members are political parties at national and regional parties that already exist in the member states.

One or two of the other parties are built around member states' parties, but also offer individual membership. ALDE,[3] the third-largest party, is one that does.

There are a few more parties that are active but don't meet the criteria to register.

The Pirate Party,[4] already mentioned by others, is one, but that too is a party-of-parties.

Volt Europa[5] is probably the only serious attempt at creating Europarty that is comprised predominantly of individuals, although even they allow for national-level parties as members in their statutes.

What can make things slightly confusing is that in the European Parliament MEPs don't actually formally sit as parties, but rather as political groups, of which there are 7. There are MEPs that don't sit in a group, but these tend to be more fringe parliamentarians, typically on the far-right.

The EPP and PES are big enough to have groups (EPP and S&D, respectively) that are more or less coterminous with their parties, but the other parties work together.

The European Greens sit with the European Free Alliance[6] along with the Pirate Party and Volt Europa, for example.

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[0] Regulation 1141/2014 [7] lays down the requirements. Amongst the details of the legal restrictions that have to be adhered to is the requirement to have elected representatives, or achieve 3% in European Parliament elections, in at least 1/4 of the member states.

[1] The European People's Party (EPP), this is the party of both the current Commission President and Merkel: https://www.epp.eu/

[2] The Party of European Socialists: https://www.pes.eu/en/

[3] https://www.aldeparty.eu/

[4] https://european-pirateparty.eu/

[5] https://www.volteuropa.org/

[6] These are mostly sub-national regionalist and/or separatist parties. https://www.e-f-a.org/

[7] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...

> Which is mostly a result of Eastern European countries > turning outright fascist (Hungary) or religious- > authoritarian (Poland), it's a classic game of shifting > goalposts.

You are seriously wrong aka naive or intentionally missing truth.

a) current Hungary and Poland ruling parties just trying to make their countries strong, finish with some colonialism-like practices. Nothing fashist or autoritarism here. b) liberal and socialist (ex commies hire) disqualificate themselves via scams and -gates, stupidity and not doing ANYTHING for their own ppls.

You should better start to be concern about democracy in France (military state by now), Germany (censorship) and Espana (country suicide).

What does this mean? How is alleged population related to family structure and sexual relations?

For some reasons I thought Europe has an aging population issue and demographic decline not overpopulation.

>> families with more than two parents

I never heard of this unless you consider divorced people.

But more importantly, the people working for her on the government side were often super close to the consultants they hired. As the minister, she takes responsibility for what is going on in her ministry - and that was full of friends giving contracts to friends.

It was a classic non-scandal, with zero convictions or indictments in the end, in stark contrast to the attention it got in the media. Not surprising considering how German journalists tend to dislike conservatives in general and how my countrymen on average lack basic financial education.

Disclaimer: I never voted conservative (CDU) and never will, but as much as I don't like von der Leyen "she's well known for nepotism" is just unfair and untrue.

https://translate.google.com/translate?um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&c...

Von der Leyen, in her first speech talked about her want to create the 'United States of Europe'. Not only does this hint at the Presidential nature of the role, but also points out the problematic issue with 'lack of democracy' in that voters were told after the election that their leader has a plan for 'existential transformation'. This is not what a bureaucrat does.

As a funny example: imagine waking up in Nov. 2016 and being told that the 'US state delegates' had not actually decided to go with 'Mitt Romney', the official candidate, but they 'changed their minds' and went with some 'outsider' from New York named 'Donald Trump'.

All of that said - the EU is actually more thoughtful about tech legislation than the US gov for sure - that said, the EU is for the most part making rules that ostensibly 'protect' them from outside parties, it would be a different story if MS, FB and G were HQ'd in London, Antwerp and Lisbon.

I don't think that's clear at all.

One could very much make the argument that it doesn't need 'governance' it needs 'coordination' which are very different things.

I feel the vast majority of the most important things could be achieved mostly by treaty and that everyone could 'have their cake and eat it' which is to say have fully sovereign states and work together.

I think there's quite a lot of a) ideology in the US of Europe b) it's the natural 'power creep' of any institution and c) the business class love to be able to 'skip democracy' and so do the 'socialist' types - both of whom kind of work in a weird kind of tolerance of one another, with I think the business class mostly in charge.

In particular, the hugely vague mandates on 'Human Rights' are the biggest coup, though the least obvious. They basically give a 'carte blanche' to the EU courts to rule as they see fit, interpreting some basic, bland text to mean whatever they want it to mean.

Since the EU courts often decide on their own jurisdiction ... it results in a huge concentration of legal power.

It's a Judicial takeover.

Something similar happened in Canada - not exactly on purpose - but when Trudeau Sr. introduced a new Constitution into Canada in the early 1980's - it was a 'nice modern document' but obviously vague. Since then, the Supreme Court of Canada has struck down innumerable old laws, new laws, they do it all the time, they even 'change their minds' on things like terminal care and suicide. Because of the vague wording, 'the world's top legal scholars and lawyers' have no clue what legislation is legal or not, it's just a matter of what our 'Tribal Council of Unelected Elders' decide to do. It's resulted in 'Law by Judicial Fiat' for a wide array of issues - all of the most important ones (identity, rights, marriage, abortion). Canadians, elected officials, politicians, the Prime Minister have little say in the matter ... except for this weird clause someone can effect which basically says a 'law is not bound by the constitution' - which is crazy in of itself.

The 'Human Rights' mandates of the EU are controversial for this reason: obviously, they are humane and positive i.e. a 'good thing' - but many people oppose them on the legal problems the effectively create. These people are easily lambasted in the press as 'anti human rights' which is of course completely wrong.

Europeans are quite smart, the lack of understanding of these things is really quite bothersome. People just seem to be happy to do whatever the elite tell them to do.

what? This opinion seems to be highly uninformed about how the EU and it's actual bodies work. i can vote for EU elections and representatives in the european parlement. Also the european commision and the council consist of either parties elected in the national elections, or national leaders themselves. Also, the european parlement uses quantitative representation, which means smaller nations have a larger say compared to larger ones.

>This dual identity has been a boon in some political situations in the past, but it is also a serious liability. Von der Leyen got the job in a usual way for a treaty organization, but she is much more political than some technocrat. There are factions that like it each way, and her job is to play both ends against the middle.

What dual identity? The european community has had a parlement since the 70's, and the european project has been a political union since it's very beginning in the 50's. You seem to assume that van der leyen has vast political power on her own, but the EU is far to decentralized for that. The EU is is a complex political system because it is highly decentralised. (which in terms is happening because all it's members are sovereign).

>You don't need a democratic mandate to appoint the head of a civil service. You definitely do when choosing the leader of the (de facto) government!

This democratic process exists, as explained above. not having direct representation is not the issue here. The way of elections in the EU is roughly the same as what happens in most if not all EU member states. (with the exception of mainly the UK).

People usually vote for parties and the persons within them, not an individual.

That almost nobody voted in the election, that nobody knew who the leader - or the platform - was going to be, and that she was absolutely chosen after the fact, by unelected leaders, that she cannot be sanctioned or replaced, and that elected MEPs cannot propose legislation - is fundamental to the nature of democracy.

Even in proper democracies, particularly in Parliamentary systems, even the budget requires approval without which the government falls and elections are called. Why? Because the proposition of budgets necessitate popular sanction. Parliament - and even legislative assemblies can dissolve government if necessary.

Ursula von der Leyen has unambiguously the least democratic legitimacy of any leader in the free world, by far.

The fact that the EU was purposefully designed this way - in the very face of very healthy democratic institutions i.e. Switzerland, UK, Germany - implies the lack of democracy was very much 'by design'.

It's an existential issue.

Consider Socialist Yugoslavia, the main difference between its electoral system and those of non-communist states was the amount of indirection involved.

Also, you ignored the second half of jariel's comment.

But the similarities end there.

You've actually provided a specific example - the most recent UK election, which highlights even further the lack of democracy in the EU, which is a 'confidence' election based on some important or existential issue, in that case, Brexit.

+ Voters were very well informed that Boris Johnson was to be the PM if a specific party were elected + They were very aware of the general platform of the parties + They were even more aware that the issue at the crux of the election was the type of resolution towards Brexit. + UK elected MPs have tremendous power - demonstrated in that very case: previous to the election, Boris Johnson faced a kind of censure by Parliament several times, MPs of all stripes voting for and against him. + The UK MPs collectively introduced legislation and forced the hand of government on several occasions. + The government was threatened with dissolution on several occasions, over a very important issue.

None of this happens in the EU, by design.

The EU is not a 'representative democracy' rather, it's a political entity which governs largely unto it's own devices - but in which some actions must have it's actions approved by elected officials.

It's the idea of an implementation that is patented, not the implementation of an idea.

This is particularly obvious when it comes to software patents as the entire process being patented concerns the manipulation of abstract information, which places even the implementation of the idea squarely in the realm of ideas. Even if that patent office requires the software to be "embodied" in some general-purpose computer before granting the patent, the patent covers the abstract data-manipulation algorithms even when they are reimplemented in different software running on a completely different kind of computer—which puts the lie to the idea that this "embodiment" has any relevance at all to the patent.

A true but useless statement. An idea is not patentable. An idea implemented in a computer program is.

I'm curious if 80.16% rate for all cases holds up when the defendant is a domestic company and the plaintiff is a foreign company and vice versa.

Again, the US vs the West?

I'd be surprised if its never happened. But the ensuing uproar is part of the politics - It's an extra hurdle for countries in a political maneuver. And a broadly positive hurdle.

I guess you loose that bet.

My issue with your comment was that you have this accusation (which you call "probable") that can be perfectly explained in another way ("New European Patent Law Court" is not going to be a top-selling front page headline)

> for instance, it's completely conceivable that a skilled legislation publishes information about a proposed law of they know it's likely to create a backlash in (some parts of) the media in a more subdued way, specifically in order to lower the odds for getting said negative press.

This is of course technically possible in some situations but considering the difficult negotiation and ratification process (just look at this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Patent_Court#Ratificat...) of the UPC it's simply very far off from the reality. Especially in Germany where there is an important pending decision by the Constitutional Court on this issue which did actually get a lot of media attention.

Edit: As pointed out by Zoobab the decision is no longer pending but has already been decided.

The decision is from 20th of March, where the Court only cancelled the ratification for lack of 2/3 majority for transferring judicial powers to international courts. Same problem seems to happen for ISDS courts in CETA in the Netherlands.

As many points raised in the first complaint were not addressed by the Court, we will crowdfund soon a second constitutional complaint if the UPCA is given a greenlight tomorrow.

For sure, that is all inaccurate in one way or the other, but people are busy or in bad situations, leaving their enthusiasm behind them.

It has always had a political element.

To quote a 1963 Court of Justice judgment:

"The Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which the states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields and the subjects of which comprise not only member states but also their nationals. Independently of the legislation of member states, Community law therefore not only imposes obligations on individuals but is also intended to confer upon them rights which become part of their legal heritage. These rights arise not only where they are expressly granted by the treaty, but also by reason of obligations which the treaty imposes in a clearly defined way upon individuals as well as upon the member states and upon the institutions of the Community. "

Hottest examples - Russia/Belarus/Ukraine, Greece/Turkey, Nordstream, the whole migrants-in-Mediteranean thing and so on.

>The people pushing for more integration are politicians and bureaucrats, not normal people.

That's simply not true. There are multiple civil society organizations pushing for a closer union. People are voting for parties that are explicitly pro-European.

Do you identify as solely as European?