Weird. I thought you were joking but you're not. What do some second-rate American actors have to do with EU Digital policy? They have no tech knowledge and they aren't even European.
In any case, they must be stopped at all cost. Freedom is priceless in the literal sense of the word, or people would not be willing to die for it.
Germany has a historic responsibility (after two totalitarian regimes that spied on its cities in its past), which thankfully means a substantial part of the population was educated in school enough about the dangers that they would not support any party who let that kind of nonsense creep in, probably even regardless of which party is in power.
I wish it were so, but alas no. We have strong historic privacy laws, data protection authorities with teeth and a working court system constantly overturning new anti-privacy laws. Most of us Germans simply do neither care about privacy nor understand why "it all has to be so hard". The parties most people here vote for are also the parties that constantly enact laws eroding our privacy, only to then have them overturned by the courts. If not for those safeguards, Germany would again be on its best way on turning into an authoritarian police state again.
The only reason Germany is opposing this right now is that we currently have both the Liberals and the Greens in the government coalition. The Social Democrats (SPD) would have just winked it through and the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) would have fiercely supported it.
which makes sense. but there’s a reason why victims of crime aren’t allowed to be jurors of their own case.
The commission is even worse. Most countries just send their loudest/incompetent/etc idiots to get them out of the way for a few years. Just look the commission president…
Commissioners and the President of commission are appointed (elected) by the Parliament who is in turn elected by the people.
Same way the American president is elected by "electors" who are chosen by the parties, which are voted by the people. People only vote directly for the congress in the US.
It's the same thing for the European institutions, I don't see the problem here.
Is Jim democratically elected? Or does he have some democratic mandate?
In most countries this would be corruption. Government projects like that have to go through an open bidding process and even after that Jim would not be considered to have any democratic mandate.
The difference between Jim and an EU commissioner is which job he is appointed to.
I think in practice the EU commission isn't that bad (so far) - almost all of the people on it are/were big name politicians in their respective countries. I might disagree with a lot of what they have to say, but they did/do represent a sizeable portion of the voters in their country.
They can say no, the same way electors could vote whoever they like as president of the USA.
It doesn't make the POTUS any less an elected figure.
p.s. EU single state Parliaments are elected too, they don't come from space.
No parliament appoints any Jim to build any road in democratic countries.
Jim's company needs to win a regular tender and have to respect a very long list of regulatory and financial requirements.
Jim's company is a supplier, commissioners are regulators.
Much like in my country (and many others in Europe) ministers are appointed by the Prime Minister who is not elected, but appointed by the parliament, by a majority of the votes.
It doesn't make the Prime Minister and all the ministers equal to an average Joe who's been called to fix a squeaking door.
Yes, because without this bidding, the process falls into corruption. No such process exists for appointing EU commissioners. There's no "regular tender" that the candidate has to win.
>ministers are appointed by the Prime Minister who is not elected, but appointed by the parliament, by a majority of the votes.
The ministers answer to the PM. They are effectively one governmental unit, EU commissioners are not part of it. If the government gets a vote of no confidence then the government is dissolved as a group. EU commissioners can't be recalled mid-way through their term though, which isolates them from this.
I'm really struggling to understand why you keep lying about this.
First of all, there is no such process for any politician everywhere in the World.
Because they are not building roads where people drive their kids on and they are not the solely responsible for building them, in democratic countries there's a lot of them contributing to a synthesis, there's government, there's opposition, there's third parties (so called because... you know!)
Secondly, There's no "regular tender" it's bullshit.
Of course there is, nobody would be candidated to be a commissioner if there's no ground.
I wouldn't be chosen by any party, ever!
Because I have no chances of winning the tender.
Thirdly, and most importantly, there's a vetting process in place in the EU, and any of the commissioners there has more enemies than supporters, including those who are competing for the same seat.
So please stop your anti-EU propaganda and talk about the points you think are problematic in EU, not some fantasy issue that does not exist.
> The ministers answer to the PM. They are effectively one governmental unit, EU commissioners are not part of it.
Just because the mechanic is slightly different it doesn't mean it's wrong.
In France the President is elected directly, in Italy it isn't, in USA it's somewhat in the middle. it's the process that makes institutions democratic, not the system you chose.
> EU commissioners can't be recalled mid-way through their term though, which isolates them from this.
It's the same for parliament members in Italy unless they either die or resign, so what?
Candidates for the remaining Commission portfolios have to go through a tough parliamentary vetting process too.
The European Council, in agreement with the Commission President-elect, adopts a list of candidate commissioners, one for each member state. These Commissioners-designate appear before parliamentary committees in their prospective fields of responsibility. Each committee then meets to draw up its evaluation of the candidate's expertise and performance, which is sent to the President of the Parliament
After the President and Commissioners have been approved by Parliament, they are formally appointed by the European Council, acting by a qualified majority.
Might not give the best of results sometimes, but people in Europe go to the ballots and cast a vote to send people there.
It's not like the board of Amazon or Elon Musk buying Twitter.
And the parliament is a joke it can’t even propose legislation they just rubber-stamp what’s sent to them by the commission. They also don’t get a say in appointing individual members of the commission only the president. However the current president was probably the most incompetent high ranking politician in Germany so maybe they shouldn’t get a vote on that either… the parliament is just a way for local parties to send away noisy politicians away for a few years by giving them a cushy job or just a place to retire for older popular ones.
Hardly anyone in Europe takes it seriously which is reflected in its composition…
That's not how EU works, I know, I worked for them.
> They also don’t get a say in appointing individual members of the commission only the president.
That's false.
Everything is online on the EU website, it's no use to lie about it when everyone can read the original regulation directly from the source.
> Hardly anyone in Europe takes it seriously which is reflected in its composition…
That's utter bullshit, your misinformation doesn't work here.
Which means that the commission members are already elected by those governments.
> The parliament only gets a vote whether to confirm the commission in its entirety
The parliament doesnt only vote for that. Every law that passes Eu-wide must be voted on and approved by the parliament.
Moreover, any law that comes to the parliament must be proposed by a parliament member.
I'm not going to be cynical and say this is just about the money but... Ah who am I kidding, this is just about the money.
Just like it always is.
I've seen a few Kutcher talks and he seems very genuine about his desire to do this work and save kids from the worst of fates.
To reduce pedophilia they would need therapists not chat control.