Hacker News Reader

Comment by reloadtak | Hacker News Reader

Each member state has to implement the system themselves. Where is the loss of control?

The US federal government has been doing that to the states for a while now. They don't have the constitutional authority to do something, so instead they shove a lever under something they nominally are allowed to do and tell the states "do the thing we're not allowed to, the way we tell you to, or else." Where the "or else" is something like, they collect billions of tax dollars from your constituents that you then can't use to provide them with services, and return them to only the states that bend the knee.

(The US constitution originally required federal taxes to be apportioned for exactly that reason.)

This isn't how EU works though (EU can actually directly order states arouns :P), so I'm not sure how that's relevant here?

That doesn't appear to be accurate:

https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/faq-eu-competences-and...

Moreover, it's ignoring the context of the thread. The relevance is obviously that coercing someone to do something against their will and then saying they're still in charge because they're the ones doing it is a sham.

Can you highlight what part of that FAQ doesn't make it accurate? EU directives are a thing.

US federal laws are also a thing. In both cases, they're supposed to be limited to specific categories.

In the EU this appears to be classified into "exclusive", "shared" and "support" "competencies":

> the EU has competence to support, coordinate or supplement the actions of the Member States (article 6 TFEU) – in these areas, the EU may not adopt legally binding acts that require the Member States to harmonise their laws and regulations.

So for example, one of the areas in that category is industry.

The common trick to look out for in cases like that is that when they want to regulate something like "industry" they instead categorize the rules as something else, e.g. the US infamously regulates non-interstate non-commerce as "interstate commerce".

Please provide examples, because this sounds highly speculative, and also straight up incorrect!

A major example is the US drinking age. Federal highway funds, which provide money for interstate highways, major US routes, etc, are partially contingent on states (who are given authority over alcohol laws both by the general police power and the 21st Amendment) setting the minimum age for the legal purchase of alcohol at 21. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act withheld 10 percent of highway funds from states that didn't comply. The fact that it wasn't 100% let the Supreme Court allow it to slide, but eventually all the states did comply, and effectively the US has a drinking age set by the Federal government instead of the states even though the states technically have the power to set an age themselves.

The Federal government using the withholding of funds to get the states to do what it wants is a well-documented phenomenon.

As an obvious example, regulating education isn't one of the enumerated powers of the US federal government, but there are numerous -- often controversial (e.g. NCLB) -- federal laws that take tax revenue from every state's constituents and return it to the state only if they comply with federal requirements the federal government has no power to impose on its own.

Where is control in being mandated to implement and EU-wide, EU-defined system? This is a net loss.

My previous comment should be taken in its entirety. The loss of sovereignty of individual countries is comprehensive across all domains and this is just one brick in the wall.

This is nothing new, this is what "European integration" means. I wanted to point out the very newspeak-esque use of the term "sovereignty" in Europe at the moment.

The spec/design leaves a lot for the member states to decide on their own. You do understand how the EU and the member states roles work?

I would think the idea is to make services and ID documents more uniform across the union. I don’t see what the individual members state lose here? Apart from the cost of implementation. The individual EU citizen would seem to benefit from standardized documents accepted by all companies and governments, do you disagree?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com