Comment on Chat Control is back & we've got two months to stop the EU CSAM scanning plans.

• MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Yeah okay. But what i have issues with; it is yet another step away from people (something medium+ sized democracies already have trouble with), leading politicians to make decisions in their own interest instead of for the imaginary numbers. On top of that, member states often move the unqualified but powerful/loved politicians there, because they “can do less damage there”.

  So i have trouble calling it one, even though it formally is.

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  • avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yup, a democratic system should be judged on its outcomes, not its structure. If the decisions taken by a democratic organization do not strongly align with the wishes of the large majority of its members, then it isn’t democratic. There are plenty such examples playing out today. Besides, in representative democracy voting at the various elections is not enough to achieve highly aligned outcomes. By the time you get to the ballot box a whole lot of the fundamental decisions have been made without your input. E.g. who the representatives candidates are and what their candidate platforms are. This is how you get to “all the choices suck” and “vote for the least bad option” scenarios. Meanwhile the prebaked decions that lead to these scenarios are going to benefit the interested groups that made them.

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• raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You are conveniently ignoring the facts that

  • elected officials are only allowed to vote on legislation put forth and that legislation is heavily influenced if not entirely written by corporate lobbyists.
  • lobbyists directly bribe their way to favourable outcomes
  • democratic processes are simply ignored when inconveniencing the powers that be - see v.d. Leyen never being on the ballot yet holding the highest office
  • corruption among high ranking EU officials is like a mafia, and they do not hold elected positions but get appointed, so they can’t be voted out.

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• JustJack23@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  They are theoretically, but coming from Eastern Europe all those levels of abstractions lead to “opportunities” for “managing democracy” and more importantly for alienation of the people because most people do not know what they are voting for or what each of their chosen representativea do when in office.

  I am not saying it is a broken system, but I think it can be better and in particular direct participation can be greatly improved.

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• TipsyMcGee@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You are right that there are no perfect democracies, but the EU really isn’t even close. Rather the EU should foremost be considered a technocracy with some formal democratic underwriting.

  In most cases, that’s totally fine and not a problem in terms of democracy. Most policies, especially in the matters the EU was originally formed to make decisions on, there isn’t a huge interest for citizens to get involved – national interests (governments) and organized interest/lobby groups usually offer enough avenues for input on things like technical agricultural export standards. However, as the Union expands into things like organizing mass surveillance under flimsy pretexts, and whatnot, private citizens aren’t adequately represented – a stronger popular mandate is required for the decisionmaking to truly be considered democratic.

  Formally, I, as a citizen of an EU member state, can influence the decisions of the EU in two ways: By voting for my country’s parliament every fourth year and by voting in the general elections for European Parliament every fifth. So let’s examine how far that goes.

  Where I live, the main opposition party and the largest government party generally agree on most controversial issues pertaining to privacy or individual rights, e.g. Chat Control. Together these parties control a majority of the seats of parliament. Those parties gain the bulk of their support on domestic issues, such as tax policy, crime prevention, etcetera. Thus, question like Chat Control are essentially dead on arrival in terms of parliamentary politics. Now, my country is also not a perfect democracy, but comparatively it would (justly) rank quite high and parties can be responsive to popular opinion and outcries. So let’s say a citizen group managed to put Chat Control on the agenda, to the point where parties feel vulnerable on the issue. What then? Then that amounts to one vote out of 27 in the European Council, which is only meaningful when that is enough for a veto.

  But the ubiquitous vetoes are what truly undermines the EU’s standing as a democracy, in my opinion. Notably, vetoes are pretty much the best you can get from your EP vote as well, in terms of the parliament’s decision making powers. In reality, the only thing citizens of the EU can rally behind is stopping proposals by, chiefly, the supreme technocratic body, the Commission. There is no cross-border party mechanism with pan-European campaigning on the council level. Voters do not influence majorities. And on the EP level the party mechanism, built on “political groups”, is opaque and not truly cross-border. Cohesive citizen involvement is foreign to the EU decision making process.

  That is not to say that the EU is a nefarious body, or that the democratic deficiencies are intended to alienate EU citizens from the decision process. It’s just that it is glaring, especially in the context of Chat Control, that public opinion isn’t in the driver’s seat.

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• DawnOfTime@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  If the economy is not democratic, it is not a democracy

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• Pirate@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  All I see is a bureaucratic nightmare. No democracy to be seen, starting from the fact all politicians in the EU are bourgeoisie.

  Their servants are all unpaid interns who have a near zero chance of ever staying in Brussels. Those that don’t come from well-off families that can support them will never enter a single EU institution.

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  • deafboy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It is a buerocratic nightmare, but filthy bolsheviks has zero rights to criticize it.

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    • Pirate@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Uh?

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• Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Nah.

  The European Parliament is impeccably democratic, its members selected by direct vote of EU citizens under a Proportional Vote system

  The EU Council is way less democractic, being just made up of representatives of each local government in Europe with zero representation for any political forces not in government. It’s like a giant First Pass The Post system with electoral circles the size of countries, only worse so since citizens don’t directly vote for them, they vote for the people who nominate them. Also in practice there is very little oversight over their actions since the Press barelly talks about them.

  The EU Commission is even less democratic than the EU Council, since it’s members are nominated by the latter, so it’s even more indirect. It’s supposed by tradition to be one comissioner per country so nowadays there are a lot of commissioners for “irrelevant thing” and the whole thing is the result of a massive game of horse trading and cronyism, especially the head, with the result that plenty of comissioners are complete total crap - the only time my country had somebody as the EU commission head, it was one if not the most crooked Portuguese politician ever to hold an international position (almost the opposite of the current head of the UN who is also a Portuguese) and it looks like Germany is currently suffering from the same problem.

  Unsurprisingly, most of the “unbelievably authocratic” shit comes from the Council or the Commission.

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• Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What you’re describing is a republic not a democracy.

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  • Humanius@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Republic and democracy are not mutually exclusive…

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    • Nico_198X@europe.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      a republic is, by definition, a democracy.

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  • Nico_198X@europe.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    a republic is, by definition, a democracy.

    you are repeating authoritarian conservative propaganda.

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    • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      No. Democracy has been redefined to be that but the orignal definition is direct voting on issues. Some state have this via voter initiatives.

      We have the technology to create a democracy and there is no reason to muddle and gaslight ourselves into thinking a representative system is the same thing.

      We need to stop reject the notion that it’s necessary because people don’t have the time to understand the bills. We have plenty of evidence they our representatives don’t bother understanding it because their incentives are not aligned with needing to understand it. They just carve themselves out of, as the legislation being discussed here does.

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      • Nico_198X@europe.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        representative democracy is democracy. not every democracy needs to be direct democracy. there’s more variety and nuance, that isn’t being “gaslit.” it’s just education.

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