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Comment by wasmitnetzen | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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