EU Data Protection: Proposed Amendments Written by US Lobbyists
blogs.computerworlduk.com
blogs.computerworlduk.com
1. EU democracy and governance is not great. Very few europeans have any understanding of how the EU legislative process works or feel like they have anything to do with it.
2. Lobbying is increasingly making a mockery of consultation as an idea.
3. These laws are pretty technical and the people making them have no understanding of the issues. They don't need lobbyists to make stupid laws. See the UK/EU cookie laws for an example. They mandated that all sites must have nag screens. They cost the economy money. Annoy all european website users and achieved absolutely nothing useful. Malice may have had some role, but incompetence had a bigger one in that case.
I wish the EU would think creatively about its whole legislative process.
Hyperbole? Only sorta.
It feels more like the American IRS than the Congress.
None. This is the reason the EU parliament is no real parliament. It lacks the option to make law and can only say "yes", "no" and "change this, then we may like it". In legal terms: The EU parliament lacks the right of initiative. Only the EU commission has this right.
Should we abolish or get rid of national governments? Why are you holding the EU to a different standard?
I too would like more direct elections and more openness in the legislative process but that does not come from lobbyists paid by American companies.
Any complaint about unelectedness of the EU could easily be applied to (say) the UK, or any other EU country. The UK civil service isn't elected by the people, but is instead sorta controlled by the directly elected people. David Cameron is current UK Prime Minister, but only the people of Witney could vote for/against him. Is that democratic? Actually commissioners change more often than members of the UK civil service, so the EU is probably more democratic.
Complaints about the unaccountability of EU by the people could just as easily apply to many other EU countries (like UK). How many people in the UK vote regularly? It shows that many people don't know/care about the process.
These arguments about 'the unelected and unaccountable EU' are really just misleading arguments, since those complaints aren't used against other unelected or unaccountable governments like the UK, but are only used against the EU. England alone used to be 7 different kingdoms (~1,500 years ago), why not split it back like that again if the UK government is so undemocratic?
Why couldn't they say: We have a tracking-problem let's force to use do-not-track or make better default cookie options? Problem solved.
They also have much more party discipline. Somebody voting for a party knows the type of policies that party will enforce, and if people are not crazy for the policies being passed, the vote in a different party in the next election.
Also, I would argue that lobbying is more prevalent in the US. Low party discipline + the much greater "need" for money = more money influence.
To clarify:
- all seats in the European Parliament are elected by proportional systems, either STV or list systems.
- the parliaments of EU member states are elected by a wide variety of systems, including list systems, STV, winner takes all (FPTP, in Britain), two-round winner takes all (France).
> They also have much more party discipline.
Are you talking about member states' parliaments here, or the EU parliament?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYsE6s2FFqI
In the video they also mention how they maybe get to talk to politicians once every 3 months (because of budget constraints) while lobbyists are there every day talking to them.
This is true. I'm trying to combat this (in the UK) with http://www.euroelection.co.uk/
> or feel like they have anything to do with it.
Which is why turnout is low and falling.
> These laws are pretty technical and the people making them have no understanding of the issues.
Hopefully the situation will be better in the EP after 2014, if more Pirates are elected (there are 2 at present). Then it will be a lot harder for lobbyists to baffle people with bullshit on internet and copyright issues.
Yes; Pirates are a civil liberty party (actaully a series of parties) for the interent age. We want freedom on the internet. We also care about over-reaching intellectual property laws in other fields, e.g. where drug patents kill people.
> When you think about it's not party, it's movement
Pirate Parties are political parties. They are also part of a milieu of wider movements such as file sharing, creative commons, free software / open source, Anonymous.
> and because of that it should ugrently define coherent politics or it will be 'less elected'.
If you mean that Pirates need to have polices on what are not core Pirate issues, in order to get elected, I agree.
> Pirates don't have consistetnt politics! I had impression it's center to left, but talking to some member i got impression that spectrum is from total right to total left.
It's true that not every Pirate is of the same mind on every issue. This is also the case with all other political parties.
Speaking about Pirate Party UK (of which I am a Governor) I would describe it as broadly center-left.
> but i don't freaking like when some conservative facebook hipsters (that, for example, don't know anything about GPL) talk about what it's all about.
If they are wrong on something, then I suggest you point that out to them.
National governments are directly pressured by the US, and MEP's are relatively independent from national politics compared to their national counterparts.
It's the corrupt national governments that tried to push ACTA trough the EU parliament (and failed) and it's those same governments that are now pressuring the EU to lift privacy protections.
The influence of lobbyists is not an EU problem, quite the contrary. It's the supposedly more democratic and transparent national governments that sell us out.
EU democracy may not be great, but it's a lot better than American, in terms of social justice. Lobbying, especially its American variation, is well known for its corruptive quality. And the mentioned cookie law, though an oversight, still, in essence is a preferable direction protecting our privacy, in contrast to we own all your data defaults of the US.
Although, I agree with the closing sentiment that a wider awareness of the legislative process would be desired, I think the focus in the scope of this article should be on the US lobbying practices in the EU and the Data Protection reform, in particular.
I think the answer probably has to do with who is picking up the tab. Politicians are owned, even more so the higher level you get.
In terms of laws that impact trade I think they absolutely do need to consider whether new data laws will make trade with the US (or other entity) difficult, because it could negatively affect both sides. However they shouldn't always shy away from it when it's the right thing to do.
Now you can go crazy down the conspiracy road here and think those people are somehow in a cabal, but I think it's far more simple than that. They are just more reliant on groups outside their countries for their personal success.
That seems excessively generous, and suggests that these people are actually ignorant of the scrutiny under which their actions can and likely will be placed. I don't think that's likely, at least in most cases, if not all.
It seems much more likely to me that these people simply don't care what their constituents think. Perhaps that's not something people in the EU are accustomed to, but Americans have been enjoying this phenomenon for generations. Perhaps our lobbyists are just spreading this problem like a political plague; if you think of it that way, they're our own ship full of infected rats.
Sorry, guys. We don't want them here either, but we didn't intentionally send them over there (or, at least, we didn't vote for it).
Then, somebody could start a project to raise funding for writing new patent laws, and based on funding thresholds there'd be a certain amount of lobbyist facetime with congresspeople, "draft legislation" provided, etc. Why should big companies be the only ones playing that game?
It'd be like the White House petition system, but with some results - even if they're just congressional awareness.
New AMENDMENTS being proposed by some MEPs are taken from lobbyists. These are amendments to the presently extremely pro-consumer proposal that are trying to water it down.