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Comment by tekla | Hacker News Reader

How are there not riots in the EU right now?

People got bored of rioting.

There were pushes for that since 2010-ish, and the cycle was: propose something that no citizen wants, riots happen, they push back. year later they repeat the same process again and again. First major one was ACTA if i remember right.

EU is a shit show of corruption and oppression. If people would riot for every atrocious thing EU does there would not be time for anything else.

Where or how are people oppressed in the EU?

[link I was referring to has been deleted by the original author]

Do you have a link to the court case? Defaming the state is its own offense so not quite clear what the terrorism link is.

Btw., that has nothing to do with the EU. Domestic German criminal law and nothing recent.

Sounds like a Germany thing, not an EU thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Would be more convincing if you could cite the EU directive which makes this law in Germany …

Just see the propose law above among many others. Oppression happens gradually, then suddenly.

Taxes are very high in the EU as a result of generalized waste of money. The green energy subsidies come to mind. We're massively subsidizing solar panels in Estonia, for instance (no light in winter).

As I understand it, there is no clear path for this to be enacted nor for it to stand if enacted.

Yep. Just the usual hysteria.

A policeman in France killed a teenager in cold blood and they set their city blocks on fire. Polticians are arguing over the presence (vaguely racist) of immigrants. There's a war in Ukraine flooding out Poland.

They have more local and pressing concerns, than this.

Because the EU doesn't really have much actual power to do anything that impacts normal citizens. Like the EU doesn't start criminal prosecutions or anything against people. If there is some crime you're being prosecuted for it's going to be your country's government that prosecutes you.

No one is really worried about the EU becoming some sort of Orwellian state because it isn't a state, it doesn't operate like that.

Edit: I should say that this shit also isn't going to pass the European Parliament, its just a proposal which is going to get voted down.

The European Commission has veto power over the European Parliament, so I'm afraid it can just force it through. Doesn't normally come to that - there's enough corruption and alternative ways to pressurise the MEPs.

As far as I am aware this is pretty far from accurate. Pretty much everything goes through the "Ordinary legislative procedure" where the comission proposes legislation and the parliament and council have to agree it (Codecision).

The council and commission can change stuff together without concent of parliament in very specialised areas (special legislative procedures), I think this only gets used for internal competion law and market regulation stuff.

In even more specialised areas the commission can change stuff on its own, as far as I know this is mostly restricted to agreeing trade deals and fixing specific tarrifs.

I can't comment on the corruption and alternative ways of pressuring MEPs. Those probably exist.

Yep. In conspiracy circles they like to demonise the EU. They don't know what it is or how it operates and can't be bothered to find out.

I don't think its a thing exclusive to conspiracy circles. Its natural for Americans to mentally model the EU as something like the US, with the EU representing the federal government and the individual countries acting like US states.

The reality is that that model is pretty innacurate, the EU has a lot less power than the US Federal governenment has. The EU still acts more like a club of individual nations than it does one overall government.

Dangerous polarization is happening in the EU right now. You'd think after WW II there will be safeguards against a repeat. But that's clearly not case.

It has safeguards, especially the German constitution. But fundamentally in a democracy if enough people want to elect a party like AFD or PFN there's nothing that can be done.

People are used to EU tightening the screws every year.

This is normal.

Though the proposition seems to be technically faulty/unenforcable so we might be spared (this time).

It's called "ever closer union" and a founding principle of the EU.

Whether you voted for it or not - or in many cases never even asked - you will have your rights taken by the EU.

Because they've been boiling the frog for 20 years.

This one might not pass today but in 5-10 years we'll likely just be fine with it if the narrative continues to evolve on its current trajectory.

Because this nonsense has no chance at being implemented.

People have been either blind for past 20 years or succesfully converted

riot against what? what kind of people riot against proposals before they are even discussed?

We're all quite busy rioting about other things, because the US funded and supplied an actual genocide nearby. As bad as this is, it's a side show, and probably won't do much.

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