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Comment by Vinnl | Hacker News Reader

We don't get a lot of insight, but we do get some. For example, when it does come up for a vote in the Council, we'll know which countries voted in favour (something you can take into account in your next national elections).

Then the Parliament will have to agree as well, and we can see which parties there voted in favour, which you can take into account in the next European elections.

The Commission is toughest to hold accountable. The Commissioner pushing it (Ylva Johansson in this case) was nominated by a country's (Sweden, in this case) government, so Swedish voters could hold the parties in that government accountable in their next national election, I suppose, but that's a very weak signal.

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>when it does come up for a vote in the Council, we'll know which countries voted in favour

Isn't it kinda late to act?

We don't need this type of insight to act. For all its fualts, the EU does tend to have ample time between the time a law is drafted and made public, and the time it is voted on. And it's relatively clear who you need to try to influence in this period: your local government and/or president for EU Council proposals, your country's EU commissioner, and the government that proposed them for EU Commission proposals, and your MEPs for votes in Parliament, which is anyway the last line of defense.

Why and how exactly this proposed law came to exist in its current form is much harder to figure out, but that's not necessary to fully understand in order to oppose it successfully.

Yes, one round late. But some past votes they did were decisive in my vote this year.

This is the site where we can see who voted what in the parlement: https://howtheyvote.eu/

That is something you could say about almost any legislation, and it's correct to some extent. That said, politicians do seem to try and predict what they'll be held accountable for, and pre-empt that. So it's not so much the voting afterwards that potentially influences the behaviour, but the threat of doing so. I also assume that this is why contacting your representatives is important - that is, essentially, making the threat.

I'll give you that it's not a terribly strong signal.

I mean, that's how representative democracy works. You elect someone, see if they are a complete prick on a hundred different issues, and then at some point they might come up for re-election.

Another way that representative democracy works is that for many issues, you get a lot of heads-up on what will be discussed, and can influence your representative accordingly.

This generally requires coordinating your resources and efforts with other people. Lobby, protest, rabble-rouse, bribe.

Half of politics is who shows up.

And you know, fund lobbyists. Shocking I know, but it's not just corporations who have lobbyists, NGOs too.

I wonder why NGO advice does not correlate with decision directions at all. Remember the CCC talks by NGO lobbists, usually culminating for everything they do in a"anyway that was what we advised, they however would vote/do/the thing we advised against". Had a huge speakerscorner going nowhere vibe and europes youth kicked that play pretend democracy in the nuts last election.

I've been donating forever to Signal, and at this point, I'm resigned that it won't reach WhatsApp parity. Just hire some lobbyists to keep encrypted communications legal as a human right.

That wouldn’t help. The proposal “got around” weakening encryption without outright removing it.

They “just” wanted anything you sent to be scanned before it was sent encrypted.

Stupid and dangerous, the even have sections in the proposal that talk about encryption being important, but somehow less important than thinking about the children and putting a cop looking over the shoulder of every single citizen.

I've started donating to EDRi[1] for this reason.

[1] https://edri.org/about-us/who-we-are/

That's like saying only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.

The solution is to remove guns/lobbyists, not attempting to beat them at their own game because you will absolutely lose.

It's only a solution if you actually have the means to do so.

If you do not, then the best you can do is to learn to play the game as best you can, so that at least you won't lose quite so badly.

With your solution bureaucrats only have access to registered lobbyist to be eliminated. Bribery remains.

One thing to remember is that the members of the commission are supposed to represent the interests of EU not the member state they are from.

Member countries are represented in the council by representative of their government and EU citizens in the parliament by MEPs they voted for.

>something you can take into account in your next national elections

There's nobody to vote for.

I looked at how Parliament voted on the AI act.

https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/166051

Basically everyone voted for it.

The sentence you quoted referred to national elections, i.e. pertaining to the Council vote.

You linked to the European Parliament vote, and that vote actually, if I recall correctly, was to prevent Chat Control (i.e. the harmful provisions).

National elections are dominated by the same parties that dominate European Parliamentary elections. It's the same voting system after all, except you have even less choice since there are fewer spots.

>and that vote actually, if I recall correctly, was to prevent Chat Control (i.e. the harmful provisions).

The one I linked is the AI act.

https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/167712

This is how they voted last time, voting against is voting for privacy

What can I do about foreign politicians?

Your MEPs are likely part of a parliamentary group with foreign politicians and coordinate with them on policy.

If your commissioner and MEPs have been solidly opposed to a policy there might not be much you can do. But do you know that that’s a case? Many governments tend to blame unpopular proposals on the EU while the commissioner that they themselves chose vote in favour.

Push your own politicians to talk to them. Most serious EU Parliament groups are trans-national.

It's like asking what can you do about parliamentarians elected in other districts.

That's always problematic. The best shot you have is pressure your own politicians (at whatever level) to try to strongarm them.

For example, US policy has quite a lot of influence on me, but I can't vote for US politicians. Or Russian policy, for that matter.

Ylva Johansson was proposed by the previous Swedish government though (a Social Democratic one), which (sort of) lost the last election. No idea why the current (right wing) government is keeping her in place.

In practise, that means she's supported by all except one of the relevant Swedish parties.

Commissioners are typically not replaced when a national government changes, which is a good thing from a stability perspective (countries can often have two or three different executives in a single year). In the end, a Commissioner is proposed by a country but is then meant to work in the interest of the entire Union, in what is largely an administrative role (Council and Parliament are the real political entities). They are supposed to be uncontroversial people, respected across the entire political spectrum, and typically will stay in post for the duration of their mandate unless embroiled in scandals.

The Commission is far more powerful than the Council and Parliament, since it is the only body that can actually propose legislation to be voted on by the other two. If the commission doesn't want something done, that thing doesn't get done - including changing older laws.

No, I disagree. The Commission cannot pass anything on its own, the agenda is set by the Council and directives are effectively drafted by Parliament bodies (since MEPs have the ultimate say). The Commission largely routes things back and forth between other bodies but has very little power in practice, and is technically required to be fundamentally apolitical.

Until a few years ago, nominations for Commissioner jobs were mostly handed to long-serving but lower-level politicians. This has changed a bit in recent times, but not fundamentally so. One of the critiques of the current constitutional setup is precisely that the executive, in practice, can execute very little without constantly going back to the Council.

The commissioner before her was Cecilia Malmström 2010-2019, a liberal party politician (right bloc) whose second term was wholly during a social democratic (left bloc) government because the nomination happened before the election.

Unfortunately, both Sweden’s most recent commissioners have been prominently advocating against encryption and for mass surveillance. I really hope our new commissioner for the 2024-2029 period ends up with a better track record on privacy advocacy.

Unless it's from the Greens/EFA or The Left there's little hope. And considering that the EPP and S&D still hold the majority of seats in the EP, less so.

https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/167712

When voting about the law in the swedish parlament, both the left and green parties voted for chat control despite having campaigned against the law in the EU election.

Both claim it was a misstake, but ironically leaked chat messages seems to indicate that the green party MP Rasmus Ling did vote for it intentionally.

https://www.dn.se/sverige/interna-chattar-motbevisar-mps-utt... (swedish news article about it).

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