The European Parliament has passed the flawed compromise text on net neutrality without including any of the amendments that would have closed serious loopholes. The vote, with 500 in favour, and 163 against, took place in a plenary session a few hours after a rather lacklustre debate this morning, which was attended by only 50 MEPs out of the European Parliament’s total of 751, indicating little interest in this key topic among most European politicians.
And thus, with one fell swoop, the progress several countries had made – including my own – is undone, by a bunch of incompetent, spineless toads in Brussels. We had full net neutrality in The Netherlands, but such rules are now effectively illegal.
And then people wonder why the EU is so incredibly unpopular.
That’s what you get for having an unelected legislature, and monetary union without fiscal union. The EU needs to either become a real country or dissolve itself.
Businesses (lobbying) just have to much influence on the EU.
Probably anyway you want to fix it is OK with me.
It to me seems to be even worse in the US.
The EU is catching up to the corrupt level of influence that exists in the US. And quickly, it seems.
Sent from the US where net neutrality is a quantum reality.
in the UK atleast, most rights to minorities have been provided by this unelected chamber where the government has often been dragged kicking and screaming and forced to give those rights.
While flawed, I think that the EU/EC does a lot for us – often a lot more than t=our actual governments.
I think a more accurate description was/is we allowed the EU to to lead on rights. Saved us having the difficult discussions and the potential political consequences associated with it.
“Sorry Church X, not our fault the EU Made us.”
Unless its popular, then obviously we don’t credit the EU’s involvement.
It was the EU parliament which made this decision, and the parliament has been elected. The 2nd part of your comment is fully correct
When did we vote for it?
Last one was in may 2014. Rendez-vous in 2019 for the next election
Many people probably never bothered to vote in the EU Parliamentary elections, but feckless indifference does not mean that it is “unelected”.
Could you explain how you think the EU government works?
I’ll admit I pay attention to international news occasionally, but even as a US citizen I understand how the crazy thing works.
Thank God we in the UK have a chance to vote to leave next year.
Oh yes, please!
Poor Scotts though, probably the only ones who would not like this to happen.
To bad Neelie Kroes isn’t an important member anymore.
She seemed to have gotten things on the right track last time these kind of things came on the table.
Modern countries need modern democracy and none seem to have it yet. Ever ask a politician why you’re too incompetent to just vote on the law yourself?
Are you implying that we should directly vote on laws. Like one citizen one vote on a bill?
I’ll admit it sounds great, until you meet and talk with people outside of your circle of friends. Then you realize there are some ideas you don’t agree with that have a lot of support. In order to get any laws passed, you may have to compromise, which would be much more difficult working with millions of individual voters vs few hundred.
I don’t trust many politicians, but I trust the people that voted many of them in even less.
Seriously?!?!?!! You have got to be shitting me. So… this means that internet will become a race to the bottom. FML.
50 out of 751 MEPs were present? The European Parliament has no such thing as quorum?
Edited 2015-10-28 04:23 UTC
That was during the debate. The vote was later that day and they did have a quorum.
Which is even worse… Most of those who voted don’t even know what the subject they voted about was.
It shouldn’t be allowed to vote without participating to the debate.
This is unfortunately true. Most of the texts and propositions are not actually read, they act on summaries from secretaries. Just like in the Senate.
Edited 2015-10-28 07:57 UTC
751 parasites who get paid to raise their hands on command.
And each of them got a whole entourage of just as overpaid briefcase carriers.
I can understand you, but your attitude is really dangerous for democracy.
There are a lot of overpaid idiots in the European Parliament, but there are also those who do very important work and who would never simply vote on command. We have to convince our fellow voters to vote for those people, not tell them that *all* politicians are idiots. Otherwise people will someday support a strong leader (in German: Führer) who will “clean up the mess”.
Edited 2015-10-28 08:27 UTC
The decisions are made by their party and they HAVE TO vote the party line. If it was half of them or just a quarter it would be all the same.
And the European “Parliament” is alltogether just a show and as a matter of fact rather an undemocratic institution. The will of the people would be better served if decisions would be kept local. Democracy works better in European countries that keep out of that mess such as Switzerland, Norway or Iceland.
*deleted*
Edited 2015-10-28 13:43 UTC
That not good enough and it’s too slow! (there’s never enough research and engagement to make that argument ever really work!)
Until society is ready for direct democracy we need PROPER representational democracy. Scrap political parties (I mean, they’ll always exist, but outlaw them OFFICIALLY so that your local representative is literally just that)
and each vote would my representatives in the primary (and secondary) chamber of any legislature should be accompanied by a written statement of why they voted the way they did. – and this gets made public, and recorded onto a searchable database.
FULL transparency is the only way to go. Demand it people
In the US, his name is Trump.
Yeah, the US government is like that too. The debates are really just for cspan. Which is very, very sad.
I can’t stop to think that this has to do with the TTIP that is actually in negotiation and that remains largely secret “for our own good” (I Still don’t understand why it’s good for us not to know what is negotiated).
Most people focus on the pharmaceutical part of these negotiations but in fact it’s much more general than that. Companies will be able to override national laws when they don’t agree with them.
Do we see here the first effect of what will become a normal process of overruling laws that protect citizen in favor of corporations? I sadly think that it’s a big YES.
I don’t think TTIP has anything to do with this. The US has net neutrality. It’s just the usual EU habit of shaping its policies to the wishes of big business, just like they did with the absolutely crazy VAT rules for digital products, which make it almost impossible for small, independent webshops to survive.
Can you elaborate on the VAT rules a bit? I heard something about that in the context of LinuxDSP ceasing to provide Linux software and becoming Overtone…
Didn’t the recent change in VAT rules have the opposite intention?
Before: you had to pay VAT of the country the service provider was located in.
Now: you have to pay VAT of the country the customer is in.
It was a measure against companies operating from low-VAT countries to dodge taxes. As only big international companies can afford to move around, it would seem that this is a very anti-big company measure.
Annoying downside is that you need to keep an eye on the VAT rates/laws of each country you’re planning to do business in but that’s not much different than the problems a physical store faces.
Edited 2015-10-28 13:37 UTC
EU rules does not overrule national rule, they are supposed to be implemented by national rule. The loophole is a loophole because it is vague, but that just allows nations to implement a real loophole, or allow them not to. The dutch law does not need to change.
This, a thousand times this!
Exactly! So many people do not understand this. EU law sets the minimum and leaves it to each nation to implement their own vision. Some will set a very strict net neutrality law, others a very loose one.
The same is true for the European Court of Justice. It’s not because they say “X is allowed” that this means every country needs to allow X. It means that every country is free to implement X because it does not violate EU law, however, they are also free to ignore it or even implement !X on the condition that !X doesn’t violate EU law either.
In a way I find it a bit hypocrite that people want the EU to set very tight rules for issues they like and then complain that it forces too strict laws on individual nations usually for issues they don’t like. Typically, the EU is doing neither because nothing would pass when you have two dozen very distinct nations participating.
Edited 2015-10-28 14:05 UTC
NO. This is incorrect. You are mistaken.
What we are currently talking about is an EU *regulation*, which leaves NO leeway regarding implementation. It is directly applicable to all EU citizens.
What you guys are talking about are EU *directives*. which DO leave implementation details and some leeway to member states.
From the article:
Sounds like exactly that: leave loopholes/wiggle room for each nation to implement it as they please within the framework.
Note, I’m not defending this particular regulation, but to me it sounds like it’s nowhere near as bad as people want us to believe. It’s just open for interpretation during implementation which I think was the intention because people/nations couldn’t agree on more exact rules. It’s typical EU stuff.
Edited 2015-10-28 14:30 UTC
You’re right that there is no ‘implementation’ for EU regulations, but while members states cannot institute any laws that counteract the direct effect of a EU regulation, they are free to create further legislation that mitigates some of the side effects.
Practically speaking, The Netherlands is perfectly allowed to further clarify by legislation exactly which types of services would be permitted in the fast lane.
That is correct. The EU can’t stipulate how a law is intended. This is no small part because of the inherent incompatibility of a Napoleonic system of law and a common law one
Yeah, great, let’s blame the EU, right? I expected this kind of remark from the average citizen, but reading it here too is depressing.
The MEPs that The Netherlands citizens elected (DIRECTLY!) also voted here. And guess what they voted?
This is the problem with the EU. Every politician uses the EU for these laws that they MUST pass (because of lobby “friends”) but cannot do on their home countries without losing face there.
Every EU country uses the EU as a scapegoat. I ponder what they’ll do once they finally manage to completely destroy it? I guess it’s also the reason many politicians don’t really want to get rid of it, at least publicly.
The one I voted for was the one who created the amendments to create full net neutrality in Europe. She’s Dutch, you see.
Hey, I’m angry too. The one I voted was part of the same EP party. But that does not mean I go bonkers and start blaming an elected body when even most of the representatives from my country voted against despite having similar amendments at the national level.
“Here’s what you voted for and what you will get”, as I once heard in the UK.
Edited 2015-10-28 18:33 UTC
People are pretty good at keeping up with national politics, but most people have very little insight of what is happening in the EU. Which is the reason lobbyist groups loves the EU. Here they can get away with murder and force their politics on other member nations.
I like some parts of the EU, but other parts makes me sick. This is one of them.
I still have the memory how OOXML got rammed as ISO standard by Microsoft to the point ISO allowed itself to be corrupted.