Hacker News Reader

Comment by sentenza | Hacker News Reader

I see no reason to distrust the whole of the EU just because they don't reject Karel De Gucht. After all, if Belgium stands behind him, the EU can't do much. If that isn't satisfying for you, I recommend distrusting the EU Commission. That's what I do.

Our best hope is to shoot this thing down when it has to be ratified by the EU parliament. During the last legislative period, the parliament has shown that it can and will use its powers to protect the citizens. (I'm thinking about its recent work on net neutrality and privacy.)

We can expect nothing from the Commision and we should expect to be betrayed by the council (that's the national leaders), but the EU Parliament is firmly on our side.

View on HN

I can think of plenty of other reasons to distrust the EU.

The EU parliament is the only aspect that is partially on the side of the people. But on the other end there's the EU Commission, the council of ministers and the entire corrupt EU bureaucracy that is beyond any form of oversight.

Parliament is the least powerful element of the EU, and any positive news that reaches HN from the EU is usually about parliament managing to pull off a rare victory over all of those other forces. (For instance Net Neutrality or defeating ACTA.)

And this only after massive popular lobbying of said parliament. EU parliament certainly isn't "firmly" on our side, but since their the only part of the EU that is actually democratically elected we can occasionally get a small majority to interrupt lining their pockets and take a stand.

The EU itself is a backdoor for treaties like TTIP and CETA. Without it, such treaties would have to go through the democratic processes of sovereign nations, which, although far from perfect, are most certainly more transparent and democratic than the EU. (At least, that was the case until the EU started including blatantly corrupt nations.)

If we can stop this, it's despite the EU, certainly not because of it.

> The EU itself is a backdoor for treaties like TTIP and CETA. Without it, such treaties would have to go through the democratic processes of sovereign nations, which, although far from perfect, are most certainly more transparent and democratic than the EU. (At least, that was the case until the EU started including blatantly corrupt nations.)

Uhm... no? If there was no EU, we'd now have a lot of bilateral agreements between the US and single European states, with each individual agreement consisting of 90% what the US policy makers want and 10% what the country's policy makers want.

The only reason that this takes so long is because the EU is actually large enough to put up some resistance. Every individual country, including my native Germany, would have been steamrollered by the US.

Just look at the bilateral treaties that EUropean countries have with the US. They are always really lopsided, like that one where the UK extradites its own citizens to the US, but the US doesn't reciprocate.

what about the democratic process? The UK politicians are being punished over the UK/US extradition policy. Who in the EU are you going to punish if one day we wake up with TTIP on our backs? Nobody, because there is no democratic process in the EU. Are you going to vote EU Commission out?

The lack of democracy is no.1 problem with the EU. Any person who believes in democracy really can't say I believe in EU at the same time.

Hu? The European Parliament is elected directly by the people (a bit too directly for my taste, in fact, I would have much preferred if the 5% minimum had been kept…). The commission is approved by parliament and suggested by the governments of the individual member states. The “corrupt bureaucracy” is put in place by the various offices (commission, council, parliament, CoJ etc.), just as in any other country.

What sort of democratic process would you prefer?

> The commission is approved by parliament and suggested by the governments of the individual member states.

The EU parliament approval is done in secret. So you can't hold responsible your elected official for supporting someone you wouldn't support. What is the point of having EU Commisars selected in secrecy? What is the point of having EU Commissars elections where there is only one candidate?

Why they can't simply follow standard democratic procedures? Why all the secrecy and elections over one-candidate? What is it? An USSR polit-biuro?

The secrecy is a fair point, but both secret votes and one-candidate votes are fairly common e.g. in Germany: both the chancellor and the prime ministers of individual states are voted on in secret in their respective parliaments (Bundes- resp. Landtag). There is also always only one candidate which either receives 50%+1 approval (and then becomes the new chancellor/prime minister) or fails and can either try again or make way for someone else.

I did not perceive this system as particularly non-democratic, especially since the actual MPs are elected in a decent way (not FPTP nor that strange electoral college used in US president elections).

Nobody of the public in Belgium stands behind him, if you understand dutch go to the reactions page of an(y) article about him of a popular Belgian newspaper: http://goo.gl/duj8ml (can't do it with Google Translate (the comments use Ajax), i haven't seen 1 positive reaction ! )

The citizens in a lot of EU countries have massively protested, that's why it got rejected, in Belgium, none of the protests even came in the Belgian media (tv, newspaper, ..) - http://goo.gl/Esg8Bs .

In the letter in my previous post, Karel De Gucht tried to influence the commission, so that they would't reject the proposal solely on the fact that a massive ammount of people emailed/contacted politicians about ACTA (it's cleary mentioned in the letter of Karel De Gucht, asking for the politicians not being influenced by the massive protests http://goo.gl/8AOmSX )

But i distrust the EU commission (not the entire EU), you corrected me on that one

PS. The popular newspaper linked was HLN (het laatste nieuws), but feel free to search any Belgian alternative newspaper :)

PS2. I haven't met anyone in person that thinks Karel De Gucht does a good job. If there is someone who disagrees with me, i'm sorry. But you are probably not from Belgium :)

I'm in no way defending Karel De Gucht, believe me.

The situation you describe raises some questions, though. If he is this unpopular and disliked in Belgium, how on earth did he manage to become Belgium's representative in the Commission, holding a key post (Commissioner for Trade)?

I've been thinking the same thing, i guess he left belgian politics on the right time for the EU.

(He was being investigated after he went in the EU)

At least in Ireland, an EU commission post is often a way to remove either someone perceived as a threat, or a sinecure for an old ally who might be better off not interfering with national politics. I imagine Belgian politicians succumb to the same temptations.

"reaction pages" are usually more frequented by haters of whatever the content of the article is about.

Also, it has been shown that the Russians are astroturfing in favor of right and left wing extremists in Europe...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com