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Comment by hintymad | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: when Europeans give so much power to EU and usually favor regulations by the government, isn't it natural that the government will try to implement more control? And it looks EU officials do not have to accountable for anything. They will not suffer personally even when their policies wreck havoc. I don't quite understand why Europeans can trust EU at all. Case in point, EU HQs shut down its air conditioning on floors 1 through 7 to prevent electrical overloads, leaving the upper levels used by top officials unaffected. Yet did anyone like Leyen get punished? Note I'm not naive enough to believe politicians don't have special treatment in other countries. But at least in some countries, politicians will not be so shameless that they'd do it in broad day light.

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> Europeans give so much power to EU and usually favor regulations by the government

This antecedent is far too broad; what regulations, benefiting whom? It's pretty obvious in this case that the majority of their representatives do not favor at least this type of regulation. In other cases, the majority of representatives favor regulation which prevents private corporations from selling their PII to the highest bidder. So you're going to have to reckon with the nuance of the real world if you don't want to make obviously leading statements like this.

The question I would ask next is that if a majority don't actually favor it, who will vote to sanction member countries that refuse to implement it in protest? Giving a central authority significant power likenthis inevitably leads to autocracy per Montesquieu.

You're right, there are nuances in different policies. I was referring to the general power and consent that Europeans grant to the EU council. In my naive view their power is unchecked. As a result, we can start with good intent and good regulations, but eventually they will abuse their power as its the nature of power.

The power is checked in multiple ways: confirmation by the parliament is required in many cases and the court can overturn council decisions. The only issue is that one check is weak amd the other one is very slow.

Representatives are different to all of the EU bureaucracy and NGOs that make up the long-term powerful influentials in the EU. Representatives come and go.

I don't understand either but just for reference on your point:

Trust in the EU is at its highest in 18 years

'52% of Europeans trust the EU, the highest result since 2007. The level of trust is highest among young people aged 15-24 (59%). Setting another 18-year record, 52% of Europeans say they trust the European Commission, with scoring again particularly high among young citizens (57%). At the same time, 36% of Europeans say they trust their national government and 37% say they trust their national parliament.Three quarters of respondents (75%) - the highest level in more than two decades - say they feelthey are citizens of the EU.'

On the other hand look at who issued this report. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/docume...

> 52% of Europeans trust the EU,

Who was asked, i.e. tourists visiting Brussels? How many were asked? How were they asked, i.e. leading questions such as "you do like the EU don't you"? Who didn't respond?

And more importantly, who is doing the asking? Oh, the EU itself is doing the asking. They are, of course, not biased in any way at all.

These numbers are then provided by the same folks that just timed a vote on our privacy when a) MEPs were known to be on holidays b) reversing the vote procedures, i.e. the 'no's have reach a set minimum c) are happy to sign away our collective privacy.

All that for 52% - all time high. When I was going to school, 52% wasn't a score that I went home to my parents with and told them how good things were going - even if it was an "all time high".

Crazy, how the EU have mixed up mediocrity with democracy.

Just to be clear, here you see the EU, but behind this there are a few corrupt national government officials that are pushing hard for this.

But hundreds voted?

314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions

Let's be honest, like for national assemblies, lots of members of the parliament are quite dumb.

I think most of them will not even look at the biggest part of the laws they are supposed to vote. They will vote for whatever they are told to vote for by the party or carefully crafted lobbying.

For something like chat control, you don't see it but there are probably a dozen lobbyist that went to see them in turn, feeding lies and propaganda that they will not challenge because they have other "important" political subjects they are busy looking at.

The commission is leading the game with lots of tricks like what was done here to get what they want in the end.

Just look at the fact that very very few of member even realized or complained to have been played fool by the last vote.

And I mean that it is wonderful already that some many members did the right choice (and I hope because they understood the issue and not because they were told to vote this), but it is crazy that so many still voted in favor.

And who knows, maybe a lot of them didn't even understand the question and were thinking that the "no" was "no to chat control", but here it goes back to my initial point that they are dumb enough to be easily manipulated by the commission members.

Yeah, it always strikes me when this crazy, obviously stupid stuff ends up "49 to 51" like either there are active forces fighting each other ending in an equilibrium, or the equilibrium is arising passively, everyone and their representatives are just randomly scribbling in the circles.

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