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Comment by elric | Hacker News Reader

The European Commission and Council are becoming increasingly unpopular among my peers. Sentiment towards the Parliament is generally still positive. But it's clear that two thirds of the Trilogue essentially don't give a shit about European people, their rights, their freedoms or their wellbeing. Things like Age Verification and Chat Control are going to blow up in their faces.

I don't get how blind these institutions are.

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The EU overall either will start acknowledging that there are problems and serious reforms are needed or history will repeat once again and we'll have another fallen empire situation.

It's not just the age verification and chat control - the list crimes is much longer and doesn't revolve solely around IT sector. The recent Mercosur agreement that just showed how the heads of EU pissed over its own agricultural sector.

Somehow, I'm afraid that we're already for at least 15 years on a path of slow fall - we're once again in the history the peasants and EU politicians has become king and queens, again not listening to vox populi at all.

Oh there are definitely fuckups beyond the IT sector. But I think the two examples I listed are particularly egregious. In part because the Chat Control proposal had explicit exemptions for politicians (who's watching the watchmen? no one, obviously!), and because the chilling effect widespread surveillance has.

The EU has definitely done a lot of good over the years as well, but the system is beginning to lean away from democracy and towards a weirdly inscrutible authoritarianism.

Of course - this is all the classic thirst for power and control over little people, served in digital sauce with "think of the children" crumble.

The question is if there's any chance for changes or EU falls apart much to the delight of its enemies. Because there are people in the continent who'd gladly revert back to political status-quo and alliances from the past and they do work to achieve their goals.

>"two thirds of the Trilogue essentially don't give a shit about European people, their rights, their freedoms or their wellbeing"

Every bureaucracy works for themselves eventually. The EU's main task is to make superstate they can control. Since they are trying to eliminate / reduce rights of member countries one can imagine what kind of concerns they have towards individual people and their freedom.

I don't buy the superstate argument, since the EC consistently avoids or waters down attempts towards federalisation (full fiscal union, directly elected Commission, Parliament with legislative initiative, yada yada). Making a superstate would constrain the Commission, not empower it. The current ambiguity of having enough integration to override member states, but not enough to be democratically challenged and kept in check is the sweet spot for unaccountable technocratic capture.

Don't get me wrong, I'm completely against the EC, but I wish they were actually trying to create a superstate

Because the commission is proposed by the national governments through the European council.

Meaning any attempt at making the commission directly elected reduces the national governments powers.

What you see isn’t the commission watering down the proposals, what you see is the natural tug of war between the national governments and the European Parliament.

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