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Comment by Eeko | Hacker News Reader

This is sad for the rest of EU-nationals as well. Being in the trade- and political union was supposed to protect us from such attacks and pressure against our political sovereignity. "If we are part of a bigger entity, then it's harder for the bullies to harass an individual nation." That's how the Union was sold for many of us.

But right now, not only we face pressure from big foreign powers, but the Union itself is moving towards greater centralization of power. Especially financially.

This does not look good.

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Vote for the Pirate Party in the next elections to the EU parliament, then? We already got two members in, we can get more.

I thought the EU Parliament was against SOPA: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111117/10010416805/eu-par...

perhaps the Spanish law will be challenged..

The EU has done nothing but move towards greater centralization of power for the past 20 years, if not longer. It's not exactly an institution heavily anchored in democratic principles.

If by centralization you mean that more matters are decided at the European level - well, that's the whole point of a Union, and what could prevent "divide et impera" tactics against single states.

On the other hand, if the problem you see is that those matters which are decided at the European level aren't decided in a democratic enough way, then we should push for less power to intergovernmental bodies, more power to the EU Parliament, and the creation of a European public opinion - the last thing we can directly contribute to; we're doing it right now ;)

I mean both a push to centralize things that really should be left to the countries and a lack of democratic transparency. In Sweden, the debate since back before the referendum in 1994 has been between a "it's better to be on the inside to have influence" on the one side and "it doesn't matter because you have no influence on the inside anyway" on the other. And in the meantime, the lack of democratic transparency has just grown, not become less.

This lack of democracy was generally sold as "don't worry, the EU is just for boring things you the people don't care about anyway, an in either case we have a veto". But now the veto is gone and centralization spreads its tentacles deeper and deeper into national affairs, so that's been a highly disingenuous argument.

Exactly, what should be left to the states, and what to the EU? IP regulation, for example, look to me like something that should definitely be euro-wide.

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