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Comment by stanpinte | Hacker News Reader

This is not exact, the EU ban decision is not taken yet. see link here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021...

    "- calls on the Council to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by such airlines;"

decision has still to be made by the council, and then - to my understanding - implemented by all member states one by one. It's a typical example of media interpretation of facts.

See here https://en.belavia.by/news/4674378/ -> Belavia confirms UK and FR banned, but it was their decision.

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> This is not exact, the EU ban decision is not taken yet. see link here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021...

The decision is taken. You are misunderstanding what you are reading.

The press release follows an urgent meeting from the Council. The Council is the reunion of all the EU heads of state. They have already agreed to the ban. The sentence you are quoting just means that they now have to pass the corresponding executive orders in their respective countries which, as you are rightfully pointing, has already been done by France.

Obviously the decision has to be implemented by all member states one by one. That's how the EU works. It's the case for every decision taken and law passed by the EU.

The misreading stems from the editorialising xendo did with the headline. xendo submitted "2 hours ago", so between 0629 and 0729 GMT.

The BBC headline at 0627 GMT was "EU agrees new Belarus sanctions after plane arrest"

https://web.archive.org/web/20210525062723if_/https://www.bb...

HN mods should correct the headline to match the article.

Planes from Minsk are travelling from and to Stockholm as we speak. For what it's worth Swedish authorities claim decision not taken by EU yet.

Dear WastingMyTime89 (<-- not at all!): Excellent post. Thank you to clarify these important details! I wonder if but other (non-EU) European states will follow suit, such as United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland, etc.

Switzerland is interesting. There's no way for a plane to get to it without crossing EU airspace.. I wonder how that plays out.

In the interests of pedantry, there are several ways. The simplest might by to bring the plane over land. There's also the option of going above the vertical limit of the controlled airspace, which seems to be debated, although it must be at least 30km, and less than the boundary with "space" which must be near the Kármán line at around 100km. A tunnel would be possible also, but prohibitively expensive. It would probably be cheaper and easier to get Hungary and Austria to leave the EU.

Barge up the Rhine

The UK has already done it.

"The UK has suspended the operating permit for Belarusian state airline Belavia, and EU leaders have called on member states to take similar action."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57236489

Given that Minsk to London Gatwick is Belavia's furthest west flight (B2851, three times per week), this has limited effect.

Belavia has no reason to fly over UK airspace otherwise.

> That's how the EU works. It's the case for every decision taken and law passed by the EU.

Not exactly. It depends on the area of law one is in.

For some areas of law the EU itself can create law in itself which immediately becomes law in the member states, overriding member state's laws (typically via EU Regulation)

But this works only in areas where EU contracts give those powers to EU.

Of course this then still depends on execution by the member states, but it is a law and affected citizens can sue accordingly if a member doesn't execute.

Air control is related to defense etc. and is not such an area, thus EU's powers are limited and individual member states have to agree according to their individual legal frameworks.

That's true - it's also worth explicitly noting that when the EU does make law directly, that is still done in a fully democratic way.

The fact that that EU laws can override national laws does not mean that the EU Commission has unilaterally imposed law without consent. Law changes must first must be approved by the Council - comprising heads of state - and then by the EU parliament, consisting of directly elected representatives from all member states.

I know you weren't asserting otherwise - I just wanted to provide additional important context for those who wouldn't otherwise be aware.

> fully democratic ... by the EU parliament, consisting of directly elected representatives

I'd argue a full democracy would be democracy by plebiscite.

Whether representative or direct democracy is better is an open question.

To me, full democracy just means a democratic system which enjoys the consent of the majority of the people. It could be parliamentary, presidential, proportional representation, direct democracy, whatever. I don't think outsiders or third parties have a right to decide whether a system of rule that enjoys the support of the people 'counts' or not.

That's entirely independent of my view that direct democracy is a terrible mistake because it decouples responsibility for making a decision from responsibility for implementing it *. However, if you can persuade a population that it's right for them, then fine.

* We can see this with the Brexit referendum. For 2 years the UK had a government and parliament that didn't want to leave the EU responsible for implementing legislation and a treaty to leave it. The result was political paralysis. Fortunately we now have a government aligned with the goal, but that's just pure luck.

> * We can see this with the Brexit referendum. For 2 years the UK had a government and parliament that didn't want to leave the EU responsible for implementing legislation and a treaty to leave it. The result was political paralysis. Fortunately we now have a government aligned with the goal, but that's just pure luck.

That's not entirely accurate. Theresa May called a snap election within a year (explicitly on the basis of building a stronger base to achieve Brexit) that resulted in a lessened majority for the pro-Brexit faction. The paralysis in Brexit was caused by the question of where the customs border would lie in a Brexit world: on the Irish island (jeopardizing the Good Friday Agreement), in the Irish Sea (jeopardizing the UK), or around Great Britain as well (negating most of the point of Brexit), on which point the British government effectively refused to provide an answer until almost the last possible moment.

That's quite right, this is the trickiest issue. However if Brexit had been decided in the usual way then responsibility for addressing and resolving that issue would have been clear. So a party would have put Brexit in their manifesto, campaigned on the issue of delivering Brexit, and perhaps held a referendum to double-guarantee they had a solid mandate to do it. This is the exact process we followed to join 'Europe' in the first place, after all.

Instead the May government utterly collapsed the moment it got anywhere close to actually delivering anything. We're very, very lucky that Boris ended up leading the Conservative Party on a deliver Brexit platform and got a solid majority.

And I say this as a dedicated, thoroughgoing Remainer that will never forgive Boris for his sheer political opportunism over Brexit in the first place. But still. My attitude is, we eventually did have an election on the issue and a government committed to the goal, so let's get on and do it, and get it over with.

Right. I didn't want to elude in all of that.

It becomes quite complex, but any system, which tries to bring more than 400M oppionons together, while giving a voice to minorities and dealing with complicated issues is inherently complex.

> The press release follows an urgent meeting from the Council. The Council is the reunion of all the EU heads of state. They have already agreed to the ban. The sentence you are quoting just means that they now have to pass the corresponding executive orders in their respective countries which, as you are rightfully pointing, has already been done by France.

That's not what the quoted sentence ("calls on the Council to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by such airlines") means. The quoted sentence is the European Council calling on the Council of the European Union to act. The two bodies are distinct despite their very similar names. In the European Council, the member states are represented by their heads of state or government; in the Council of the European Union, the member states are represented by lower-ranked government ministers (finance ministers, foreign ministers, agriculture ministers, transport ministers, etc). The European Council sets the political direction, but (with rare exception) lacks legislative powers. So here the European Council is calling on the Council of the European Union to enact legislation. Of course the Council of the European Union is going to do what the European Council says. But the Council of the European Union needs to wait for the Commission's lawyers to draft the legislation, etc.

The Council of the European Union actually has legislative powers in this area. Based on the wording of the European Council conclusions, I think we can expect formal legislation from the Council of the European Union to enforce the ban. That doesn't stop the member states from acting themselves (under emergency powers they retain) before the ban has formally passed at the EU level. And of course the member states have to enforce the ban, and the EU has only limited recourse if member states refuse (in many but not all cases, the Commission can take the member state to the European Court of Justice). But I doubt that's going to be an issue here, I think there is a clear political consensus in this case.

Yes France has already implemented this decision, without any involvement from the Council of the European Union.

To be horribly pedantic about it, they haven't actually implemented the decision because the decision hasn't formally been enacted yet. (Decision is actually a technical term in European Union law – EU legislative acts can be classified as directives, regulations, decisions, or recommendations. I'm not sure in this case what type of legislative instrument they are going to use – it could be either a regulation or a decision, it won't be a directive or a recommendation.)

They've just decided to do the same thing independently while they wait.

Yes, definitely pedantic.

For all practical matters that is the same. Of course member states have to implement it. The EU is (still?) not one country.

What counts is that the leaders of all EU countries agreed to it. So it will happen.

Let's see how it evolves: I think every country shall make its cost-benefit analysis, and the ones with nothing or very little to lose shall ban. I would bet on medium compliance.

The thing is, to put it bluntly, it's Belarus. Almost all of them have nothing to lose. I imagine air traffic over Belarus can be avoided with minimal financial losses and Belarus itself only generates a small amount of traffic. Plus some of the countries voting for this are actively hostile to Belarus (I think Lithuania is in that category).

The only thing that would make them change their minds is if Russia reacts somehow.

> I imagine air traffic over Belarus can be avoided with minimal financial losses and Belarus itself only generates a small amount of traffic

The ban is for Belarusian airlines over EU members countries. The one who is being targeted to be "financially hurt" is not the EU countries themselves but the Belarusian airlines. I'm sure they'll feel the impact very soon, as they'll basically need to cancel every flight unless it goes to Russia.

It's probably going to be both ways, though. I can't imagine Belarus not retaliating (though the EU has already decided to avoid their airspace, anyway).

For an airline, it's much easier to fly around Belarus and not land in Belarus, than to fly around the EU and not land in the EU.

I guess they shouldn't have done what they did, right? :-)

Russia could react by operating flights from Minsk using its own companies that have a permit to fly over the EU. Otherwise this is in fact doing the Kremlin a service since it makes Belarus even more dependent on Russia. Lukashenko has been digging his own hole when he ordered that the plane be diverted to Minsk in order to arrest that poor guy and his girlfriend. Now his only "friend" is Putin.

> I think every country shall make its cost-benefit analysis

Nope, that the ban will happen has already passed, which is what this article is about. What hasn't happened yet is that the executive order in each country has yet to happen, but that won't include extensive debate as the decision that has been taken is a united front for the participating countries.

Actively ignoring already agreed orders to pass would be going against their own interest of a united front, which obviously would go against the core principle of the EU, so unlikely to happen.

Decisions like this by the Council are legally binding on member states. Similar to how GDPR is technically implemented by each state's relevant government agency.

If it's restricting flights over their airspace then it only really needs Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. And I'm sure they would be quick to implement such a ruling, as even before this incident they weren't on the best of terms with Belarus.

It's important that the EU acts as a block.

Also, it sounds wrong that they can allegedly ban Belarusian planes from "European" skies, with Belarus being a country in Europe...

By European skies, they just mean the skies over the European Union. News articles routinely say Europe when they man the European Union. Sometimes confusingly, but I think the context is clear here.

It's clearly wrong, that it's pretty common to write it like that doesn't make it any better.

Thanks, thanks for revealing that I should trust journalism even less than I thought.

I now noticed that

> The EU has decided to ban Belarusian airlines from European skies

has "decided" not "implemented" or "started", so technically it is matching reality, even if misleading.

"Cock-up before conspiracy": problem in this case is that journalists do not understand EU process. In fairness to them it is not straightforward and in any field of politics something is said to be "done" at many different junctures: for example when it is politically inevitable, when it is informally agreed, once it has been formally agreed and then, of course, once it has actually been effected.

my comment was without political meaning : I have relatives who need to fly to minsk from EU on Saturday for family reasons, I'm just monitoring the legal status.

The BBC story is https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57236489

With a headline of "EU agrees new Belarus sanctions after plane arrest"

It states

> The EU has decided to ban Belarusian airlines from European skies after a flight was diverted to Minsk on Sunday and a dissident journalist arrested.

The specific release from the meeting: - calls on the Council to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by such airlines;

Seems reasonable reporting to me, the EU has decided to do it, and is now implementing that decision.

Further in the article

> The UK has suspended the operating permit for Belarusian state airline Belavia, and EU leaders have called on member states to take similar action.

That the HN submitter changed the headline is hardly a damning indictment of journalism

(The headline of the .com version was the same at 6:27 GMT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20210525062723if_/https://www.bb...

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