EU Integrity Watch
integritywatch.eu
integritywatch.eu
The main purpose in my cynical view is to provide the appearance of transparency.
Slightly less hidden, there's a Dutch organisation called "Veiligheidpercepties.nl". Here they are quite literally saying it's not about safety but the perception of safety.
But okay, at least some document gather tasks will be performed etc. However, the most important thing, associating repercussions on corruption, that's extremely difficult. In the Netherlands it's essentially impossible for certain types of corruption. i.e. the important ones.
Again, the existence of his role is simply to give the perception that his role is real and actually does something. People think the Netherlands is less corrupt because they have roles like that etc.
In the Netherlands they have a concept called “interventions”. They are activities carried out that are supposed to interfere with organised crime. In 2005, one of my neighbours was busted for growing weed. The other neighbour was involved with the authorities in one of these “interventions” that involved harrassibg the guy that grew the weed both before and after he was prosecuted.
But we lived literally between these two. All harassment affected us and because we complained we became targets as well. The harrassment was serious and spanned more than 10 years. Totally illegal.
I amassed an enormous amount of evidence for a stalking case, more than 600 videos. But it took 5 years and a complaint to the national ombudsman to get it to court at all. Then the person in charge of the organisation carrying out the intervention was the prosecutor chosen on the case but he was prosecuting his own informant/collaborator on the intervention with the goal of making the case fail. He lied to the courts and withheld enormous amounts of evidence.
The case failed. It was later I found all the connections. The former head of the team interventions had in the meantime also manoeuvred onto the board of directors of the court where influence on the case could be carried out from behind the scenes. This person is now the president of this court.
The authorities turned off all police support to me and my family and dismissed every police report.
I took the police to court and won. They appealed. I won again and was able to read around 1000 police pages and found confirmation of this.
It’s an absolute disgrace. Cost me more than 40,000 euros in costs trying to cope with years of government assisted harassment simply because I lived next door to one of their targets.
https://www.veiligheidspercepties.nl/
The director of this organisation turned up at my door once.
The prosecutor that lied in court (and had been caught lying in court before as well) retired after my stalking case. His partner that with whom he wax heading up the organisation that runs these interventions left the prosecutors office shortly afterwards after an argument with the head prosecutor. In fact 7 prosecutors were reshuffled that year and no one is asking the questions why
https://www.1limburg.nl/amp/nieuws/1357826/leegloop-bij-just...
And the name of the prosecutor that became the head of a court is mentioned at the end of every episode of this 6 part documentary about 9 innocent people that were sent to jail on fabricated evidence here:
https://kro-ncrv.nl/programmas/villamoord/dit-komt-het-vertr...
The reason that person’s name is mentioned at the end of each episode of this is because she was the head of the organised crime unit in Arnhem till 2010. After that she became the head of the Maastricht organised crime unit and then became responsible and then after that the head of team interventions where she was responsible for what was being done to me.
In Dutch courts a prosecutor in a criminal case is aided by a secretary called parketsecretaris. I always wondered if the prosecutor was trying to make a case deliberately fail. Then surely the secretary must have noticed. I found out years later when I learned that at that time her role was intervention jurist. So she was in on it too.
Nice isn’t it. The Netherlands also holds completely corrupt court cases as bad as in the worst dictatorships.
I've also heard it said that the Dutch think they don't have corruption because they do it for free. You just need to find the right phrasing.
It's very easy and clear to see that e.g. Airbus are lobbying (not necessarily in the negative sense, there are information meetings with youth programmes) a lot; that there are lots of tenders with red flags (https://redflags.integritywatch.eu/) but most are just that there haven't been a lot of proposals.
Makes me hope or wish for a cross-website pseudonymous karma system, to at least rein in this kind of public opinion gaming.
Back on-topic: this website seems to be a net positive, already it's challenging some of my preconceptions in that some EU member states are apparently more or less corrupt than I was expecting.
That seems completely reasonable.
That's demonstrably not true. Granted, that's what Jean Monnet and his disciples had (and still have) in mind, but that's not what was presented as the face of this supra-state association as soon as the 2000s.
That's why many people are so upset about it since the gloves have come off about the true intent of those Jean Monnet followers, which by my (previously stated) estimation started happening in the last 10-15 years.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
I just want my life not to be controlled anymore by an unelected thingie such as the European Commission, as such, shifting the blame on provincial (because that's what they are by now, anyway) politicians is just very counter-productive.
And then the powers that be will act surprised when they see that anti-EU sentiment is gaining ground (it's the Russians' fault, of course, if not them, the Chinese or the Iranians, never allow any political agency for people going against unelected supra-national entities such as the European Commission is).
Thing is that during the last 10 or 15 years (things seem to have accelerated after the latest big financial crisis) almost all consequential decisions taken at the national level have just been continuations of directives coming from Brussels, so even the politicians that happen to get elected at the national level are now just, I don't know what the best term would be, pawns? And this latest Next Generation EU madness has just made things worse, across the board, on account of "you'll be doing what you're told or no money for you!".
Looking at Brexit from that perspective helps make better sense now, it was not all a "the poor toothless people have taken Britain out of the wonderful EU!" as the tertiary sector elites in South-East England made it out to look just after the fact, as Britain was one of the few political entities that could have disentangled from the whole mess while they still got the chance for that. Not sure how to judge of the results of it all, maybe it's too soon to call it, but there was reason behind the apparent madness.
So that's (almost?) every government? For example, in the Netherlands, we do elect the members of parliament, but they then choose the government (hence the government being unelected).
And of course, that government then nominates a Commissioner, forming the European Commission together with other EU governments (hence it being similarly unelected).
And then of course, our government also gets a say about EU laws, together with other governments.
Just like the European Parliament, which does happen to be directly elected.
Also, a lot of important decisions are still national (even if they might be dressed up as European).
You mean like department for transport, or, you know, the national bank?
Sets interest rate, prints money, entirely unelected, the most important institution in the country.
Since you're referring to Brexit, you mean a political entity like the UK's House of Lords? A lot of the people in the pro-Brexit camp were often blaming EU unelected bureaucrats but seemed to be perfectly fine with their own unelected, appointed for life (and in some cases hereditary) lords.
I would like to understand why. I agree with you it's not all "the Russians' fault", and I may have jumped the gun a bit with my earlier comment. There's definitely a weakness in the disconnect between Brussels and the states/citizens.
Is it a fundamental belief that local government is "better" or more adapted to local circumstances at least? ("sovereignty trumps economy"). Or that a vote for the EU parliament is too "diluted"? Maybe, but being a part of the EU is a trade-off: there's a lot of advantages in being a part of a bigger trading and political bloc.
After the (IMHO) unmitigated disaster that was Brexit, very few other member states still have an appetite for leaving the EU. But it'd be better if the EU was something they'd enthusiastically want to be a part of, instead of begrudgingly. However, eurosceptics seem to have difficulty articulating the changes they'd want to see.
In many EU countries big cities have become complete and utter shitholes due to a complete failure to integrate many migrants (both legal and illegal migrants). In some cases there are 70% of migrants neither working nor speaking the country's native language. They're poor people and responsible for a disproportionate percentage of crimes.
People simply cannot stand it anymore.
This in turn has led to a sharp rise of the far-right in many EU countries. In some countries the far-right simply won the election (last one being The Netherlands) but in most countries the far-right is, even if not outright winning yet, gaining huge grounds (Italy, Spain, Greece, France for those I know).
People are, literally, so fed up with immigration many simply vote for the far-right.
As a result we've got the usual politicians turning their jackets inside-out:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/01/the-far-right-is-winnin...
"Mainstream parties across Europe are shifting their positions on immigration in hopes of impeding the rise of the far right."
I don't see any integration effort. The only thing I see is politicians bringing in as many migrants as they can in the EU and now saying they'll stop doing so because they realize they may be losing the next elections.
I suspect that you are not really familiar with much of legal migrants. Can you cite some real numbers(that is not coming from Sweden) about this?
Also, migrants are usually pretty well educated and rich people if they arrived through legal channels because there are high bars for them.
Asylum seekers and war refugees are just traumatized people who escaped from immensely bad zones and it will take some time for them to integrate and adapt, and many are suffering from shattered mental health. It takes years to even recover from basic PTSD with adequate therapy and support from one's own family.
Also on my side of EU,most trouble maker immigrants are usually illegal ones sheltered by local mafia/gangs trafficking them.
State has numerous initiatives to integrate them and introducing constant changes to support them, but for adults it takes some time to adapt, recover, integrate, find proper communities because most of them have left or lost their families.
It is sad to see my fellow people play right into right-wing sentiments that 80-90% immigrants are criminals or whatever and enjoying our social benefits. Nothing could be far from the truth, except for Ukrain war refugees, most migrants(except asylum seekers) have any access to state money. Of course, no one asks for real statistics or numbers because everyone is miffed with war and inflation, but we seek someone to blame and what else better than the people we don't even know about?
P.S. I volunteered in some immigrant shelters until last year and have many immigrant colleagues at work, hence I believe that I have slightly better concept of the matter than average HN person from EU ;)
Is it though? The last time it was "gaining ground" (Brexit) it was mostly and old vs young divide, with young people rather overwhelmingly supporting the EU. I wonder how much of this sentiment is down to politicians wanting to do things that are otherwise forbidden by EU-wide laws and regulations (most of which are rather good, actually).
Occam's razor tells me: Its easy for the local politicians to blame "Brussels" for any problem they dont want to deal with / take responsibility for. Its also easy for the population of the respective country to accept this framing, since that relieves them of any responsibility of having voted "the wrong people" into power, or not engaging in politics themselves.
Regarding the "unelected" European Commission: Its members are proposed by the European Council(which is composed of the elected governments of the EU members states) and then subject to a vote of approval by the elected European Parliament. I find it hard to believe that your opinion of the European Commission (or the EU in general) would differ significantly if the European Commission would be elected directly.
Whoever wants to?
We are heading towards a reality worse than hell where those who are good, honest, hard working and generous are punished for the benefit of those who are wicked, dishonest, lazy and greedy... All while the real economy disintegrates and concentrates in fewer and fewer hands which makes the shrinking pool of 'the lucky few' increasingly delusional and out of touch. We need to abolish the monetary system NOW and abolish taxes. Government should be forced to operate on absolute minimal resources based on its own investments.
> All while the real economy disintegrates and concentrates in fewer and fewer hands
Exactly! Even "the real economy" (by which I guess you mean the part of the private sector that doesn't take any government tenders and subsidies) is consolidating in the hands of a few unimaginably rich private organisations. This isn't a problem of governments, it's a problem of "free-market" capitalism. If you try to compete, they try to buy you out and if you refuse, they use their near-limitless pile of money to essentially buy your market share and drive you out of business.
It is very important to draw a clear line between "right" and "wrong" reasons, because all policitians after their mandate will end up in a corp of some sort, as life is long road.
Not to mention: how do you legally "track" where politicians are going after their mandate? Do they have the obligation to publish their source of income or wealth after their mandate for a significant amount of (10+) years?
And how to draw the lines between "right" and "wrong" in order to decide to seek justice.
For instance in my country it seems a politician was involved in facilitating some russian gaz stuff, and with the war for ukraine, we all discovered he was a high level executive in a gazprom proxy. He had to leave because of the war, and it is only because of that that we found out.
You can easily extrapolate that case to others, and most won't probably be detected unless there are people/orgs actively tracking them and their resources for a significant amount of time.