Hacker News Reader

Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

> decisions made by politicians in the European Union

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).

View on HN

> 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).

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.

To me it sounds exactly like local American politicians blaming "Washington".

> And then the powers that be will act surprised when they see that anti-EU sentiment is gaining ground

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).

In quite a few European countries the government isn't directly elected - so "unelected" is a bit tricky here unless you are extending that to those national governments, too.

Of course that I'm extending that to any unelected government/political entity whose decisions happen to affect people's lives on a national level (so I'm skipping the discussion about the unelected local "mayors"/leaders from some big European cities, even though a discussion should be had even there).

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.

> Of course that I'm extending that to any unelected government/political entity whose decisions happen to affect people's lives on a national level

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.

The European Commission is not appointed by some unearthly deity, nor is European legislation divorced from the national governments.

Also, a lot of important decisions are still national (even if they might be dressed up as European).

> unelected government/political entity whose decisions happen to affect people's lives on a national level

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.

Societies are free to change how these things are run - and depending where you are, they did change in the not too distance past, e.g., Bank of England in the 1990s becoming independent as rate setter.

There have already been quite a few laws passed by our newly-liberated government watering down data protection, environmental laws, ramping up authoritarian impulses, and so on. It's not going well I tell you.

> unelected government/political entity whose decisions happen to affect people's lives on a national level

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.

I wonder what are your thoughts about recent acceleration in integration efforts..? It looks strangely familiar to me, though different time and different state actors involved :)

Which integration efforts are you talking about?

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.

> 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. <

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 ;)

I meant recent push for treaties reform, briefly described here (random article on the topic) https://www.euractiv.com/section/eu-reforms/news/the-little-...

It's likely to get much, much worse: https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/eu-parliament...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com