I really can’t explain where Politikverdrossenheit (political apathy) comes from.
edit: The last sentence is sarcasm
I understand... it's simple... someone does something bad, nothing happens to them... bad thing again... nothing happens... people protest... nothing happens... bad thing again.. nothing happens...
If this was some other timeline, and people brought guillotines out every couple of years and "dealt with" the "bad" politicians in "the french way", politicians themselves would be calling for jail sentances, because they'd atleast be alive in there.
Otherwise, i live in a different country, and the political situation is the same.
Also let’s be clear, the reign of terror was an absolute shit show in every since of the word as was killing the king. 30 years of war just to have another monarchy to overthrow isn’t exactly a great move.
It's a shame. We tend to criticize EU for a million valid reasons, but once in a while when they do something right, our government first reflex is to just ignore it.
[1] (German) https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2022-09/vorratsdaten...
Though if the next cabinet in a few years includes the CDU (christian democrats), they'll try again.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p093wy1r/cant-get-you-... ,
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Herold ,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Urbach
Or later the Celle Hole
We're literally living in a time where "global" namespace changes are made willy nilly by people who don't even spend the time reading everything they may have an effect on by doing them, which is just accepted as being "impossible".
Further, the only people with the time/resources to engage in politics in a tangible way are pgobably the most disconnected people from the way of life for the polises they are shaping.
Human beings are ruthless energy optimizers (biological constraint), and the cognitive load of actually productive political engagement is absurdly high. Thus, people with literally anything else to do avoid it, or find it pointless, leaving only those so bereft of anything else to do to be the most impactful on that arena. Which in turn creates more for the disengaged to have to do to keep them from getting in the way...
It's a vicious cycle.
If you are disappointed with politics that is a reason to vote. If you don't care, that's a valid reason not to vote
Would you tell people in China, "if you are disappointed with politics, vote in your People's Congress elections?"
This is very reductive, you've lost sight of the trees and only see the forest. Politically apathetic people have a wide array of personal reasons for being the way they are. You don't know what's going on in all of their lives, you can't reduce all of their life experiences and feelings into one big conspiracy.
No need to be 'verdrossen'.
It would be worse if the courts just approves all laws the government conceives.
Or for some reductio ad absurdum: Slavery is legal for 10 months per year, but every October the Slavery Legalization law gets struck down by the courts, proof that our democracy works.
This is probably one of the cases where lawmakers feel some spite about constitutional courts exerting too much influence over their work. It would be easier if they’d just talk about it before going through the whole process but I guess creating frustration is part of the point here.
1. The plaintiff must have suffered an "injury in fact," meaning that the injury is of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent 2. There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct brought before the court 3. It must be likely, rather than speculative, that a favorable decision by the court will redress the injury
Talking in advance about what law is constitutional would be perverse under such system (I love the standing doctrine, btw and so does the Chief Justice).
After DataRet was stroke down by the Constitutional Court, our Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne pushed for a new data retention that only targets 100% of the surface of the country:
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/targeted-data-retention-onl...
Either memories are short or there is political fantasy of being control freaks going on
https://netzpolitik.org/2019/vorratsdatenspeicherung-in-euro...
So this becomes illegal in other EU member states now too? Does anybody have any inside how this will change EU data retention in general?
TLDR; Continuous "General and indiscriminate retention" is not compatible with EU fundamental rights.
[0]: https://europeanlawblog.eu/2021/06/08/big-brother-watch-and-...
You are also not allowed to use a customer database for advertising if the customer is no longer one for more than 6 months.
Time and time again, history has proven everywhere that if the population does not keep their politicians in line, they will get drunk from all the power.The people do not even vote reasonably, so it is very difficult.
Have these lawmakers ever presented good results which can be attributed to their work?
You get three votes [0] every four to five years, where you need to vouch for someone from a short list to make all the choices to represent you. And this is actually the good case, in the US it's reduced to just two options. Deciding whether someone votes reasonably is very hard when they weigh certain decisions (and how likely politicians are to keep their promises) completely different.
Just as an example, you might say that you think climate change is the most important topic overall right now, so you vote for the German Green party - except, of course, if you doubt that they'll actually change much or if you think that nuclear power is the answer, which they don't like. So you think of voting for a small party, but they'll be in the opposition at best, but most likely not even hit 5%, making your vote nothing more than a gesture completely ignored by the ruling parties. So what's the unreasonable choice here?
Long story short, what I'm trying to say is that whenever I heard the accusation of people voting unreasonably, so far, the actual argument always was "people disagree with my [clearly optimal] opinion or voting strategy".
[0] Local, federal and state each.
"Google can do that [blanket data collection], my Chinese mobile phone manufacturer too, why shouldn't the government be able to do it?"
Something to ponder when we talk about data collection by private parties: like it or not, it does provide justification for governments doing the same.
I had the impression member states were 100% sovereign within the EU...
On other side of things the goverment does more data collection and data requests than nearly every other goverment. The goverment is super willing to record everything you do. While at the same time making it illegal for you to record someone without their knowledge.
I suspect there is heavy lobbying from within the professional bureaucracy (including police and IC) for this. Possibly also diplomatic pressure from countries like the US.
Perhaps it's "always has been", it's just laughably easy to do with software these days.
A ruling against mass data retention in the UK could help Privacy International in their on-going case against the government for its mass surveillance and use of "bulk personal datasets".
https://www.privacyinternational.org/long-read/4598/briefing...
"allows, for the purposes of safeguarding national security, an instruction to be given requiring providers of electronic communications services to retain, generally and indiscriminately, traffic and location data in situations where the Member State concerned is confronted with a serious threat to national security that is shown to be genuine and present or foreseeable. Such an instruction must be subject to effective review, either by a court or by an independent administrative body, and can be given only for a period that is limited in time to what is strictly necessary, but which may be extended if that threat persists"
-- that is just asking for a "perma-emergency" to justify such an exception for a long time until the court can (years later) maybe decide that that goes go far.
For context, I thought I'd look up the current UK "National Threat Level", and it is apparently "Substantial", which is the middle value on a 5 point scale, and the lowest it has ever been since the system was introduced in 2006.
For instance, the 1974 French SAFARI scandal,
where the government wanted to build a centralized computer database that would collect country-wide administrative data, starting with the 400 (physical) police files, and IIRC with a single social security number for each citizen,
has caused such an uproar that the project was abandoned and the data privacy regulator CNIL was soon created.
(Note the totalitarianism (aka "high modernism") inherent in computers, by the way what they show tends to be accepted as truth, the way they don't have any common sense, the way their digital nature tends to classify people into strict categories, which then become set in stone by their limited capacity to forget, the way the free flow of information turns qualitative and how they give a lot of power to the State while democracies try to limit this power.)
Sadly, we've recently seen its failure - caused in a big way by it being stripped of its power in 2004, leaving only a consultative (non-)power - in 2010 a law about "a general principle of information sharing between administrations" has still been created.
Some notable worries are about the preceding 2007 law that authorized ethnic statistics - while personal data treatment using ethnic or racial data, and adding race and religion values in the administrative files are still forbidden - the potential of ethnic data becoming racial data is still very high.
Another worry is about the genetic prints file : created in 2002 and first limited to sexual criminals, it has since been extended to a whopping 5% of the population, 87% of which have NOT (yet, quite a lot of the debate being how long these files should be kept) been condemned for the reason they got added to the file. It gets worse, and shows how quantitative can become qualitative : because genetic information is NOT independent between family members, a staggering third of the population ends up having its genetic identifiers at least partially stored in these files.
A 2022 project (submission date ending 2 weeks ago) to interconnect the digital prints file with the criminal records file has mentioned a potential future project of connecting both with the generic prints file... (among others) with also a policemen-suggested requirement that "the solution be compatible with remote work [...] not requiring strong authentication".
In particular, service providers will probably still have to maintain the infrastructure to activate “general and indiscriminate” data retention on demand.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32909698
I don't care about the points, just think it is a bit weird that a promotional commercial company post is now on the frontpage instead of a more neutral news site.
Although now, Reuters would probably be the better source than what was available earlier today:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/indiscriminate-data-reten...
This tends to get brushed aside by people defending the EU. Isn't this a step in the direction of the EU becoming something like the United States? There tends to be a lot of double-speak on this: "That's not true" and "it's a good thing" at the same time.
Of course, there is no EU army enforcing EU law, so a sufficiently damn-the-consequences German government could do these things, at the cost of destroying the single market.
- Two wrongs don't make a right: Someone behaving unethical does not excuse unethical behavior from someone else.
- There is a difference in the power dynamics of the relationships: Consumer and service provider VS citizen and state.
No it does not. I can (and mostly do) evade the data slurping of private players, at least in theory, by not using and blocking Google, Meta and the likes. I cannot reasonably evade the data crimes that the government does.
The government and the private sector are very different and what one of them can and can't do is not necessarily related to whether the other should or shouldn't be able to.
You can debate how effective it is, but they are not allowed to do it, and nobody should be allowed to either.
did you ever see a cloudflare gdpr consent popup?
For practical reasons most EU countries want to be in compliance with EU law and will often follow ECJ recommendations and change their own laws if found to not be compliant. Also many EU countries have laws that essentially state that all their laws must comply with EU law.
The other option is to apply for an explicit opt out of certain a EU regulation that you feel is incompatible with your own laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_Sta...
Isn’t granting the ECJ jurisdiction is a requirement of EU membership?
This differs from the situation in the US where Texas couldn't pass an amendment to their state constitution declaring that they are no longer subject to federal law. State law is subordinate to federal law / the US constitution.
As I understand it, the way this usually works is by national law explicitly endorsing EU law (usually at the level of the national constitution) and stating that in the event of any contradiction between EU law and domestic law, EU law will prevail. So EU law is "supreme" in practice, but that supremacy is granted/recognised under the domestic constitutional order.
In some countries, this recognition is limited, such that national courts will not permit EU law to override certain aspects of the national constitutional order. When that happens, there is really no easy solution.
An interesting recent example is https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-closes-case-against... where the German court found that an ECB bond-buying programme was unconstitutional and in doing so refused to follow a prior decision of the ECJ.
Another consequence of this approach to supremacy is that significant changes to the EU treaties require a constitutional amendment in Ireland, which requires a referendum. To my knowledge Ireland is the only country to have such a binding legal requirement, with the effect that a number of amendments to the treaties have in the past been delayed or defeated by the Irish public voting against them.
100%? Only those with a nuclear deterrent, and maybe not even them. Otherwise, there is always a bigger fish.
Edit: I can see some people don't believe me. Do you really think treaties are more than paper if you don't have force to back them up? The US has threatened to invade the Hague if they try to charge Americans with war crimes. Went beyond mere threats in fact, congress and Bush the younger enshrined this threat in Federal Law.
~80-90% depending on how you measure.
The judiciary of all countries is technically under the ECJ jurisdiction. People can sue their countries, and local court decisions can be appealed to the European court structure (ECJ/ECHR).
That was in fact one of the Brexit talking points, judiciary independence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...
Yes. See e.g.
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government_in_ireland/...
Practically, if a national law is found to be not compliant with the EU legislation, the country has some time to adjust it to make it compliant or to repel it. In court cases, the Constitutional Court can directly strike the provision in the law or the entire law, as appropriate.
This has, of course, changed over the last century, and US states lost most of their sovereignty. I predict the same will happen to EU states over the next century.
Member states have agency to leave the EU whenever they'd like if they wish not to be bound by agreed upon laws
There was a national referendum before the Lisbon treaties that was declined by the Netherlands and France, which in turn "watered down" the EU constitution into the Lisbon treaties which are now in use, which were then ratified without any national votes.
As the German politician Martin Scholz once said, if the EU were to apply for an EU membership, it would get declined because of a lack of a democratic foundation.
the whole system is broken. the parties waste most of their energy to fight each other instead of cooperating to actually solve problems. i want to throw out the whole lot and replace it with a system that is actually representative of the communities. is there any party anywhere that can achieve that?
Maybe the Swiss with their voting on all issues system, are a step in the right direction.
My point is that it does no such thing – it doesn't hold up as a valid argument (which really is the bare minimum for something to even be considered as potentially true).
In both the example above and this example, what was taken as "ceremonial" (especially since the advent of much, much better forms of communication than what was available the 1790s) was still the the lawful course. Our systems of government are held together by the belief in and affinity to perform duty according to precedent.
The convention expected was the GG would announce these appointments, he didn’t and put out a statement when it was found out that literally said “oh yeah not my job sorry you thought it was”
https://www.gg.gov.au/about-governor-general/media/statement...
A list of seven rejected laws. I think there was one more in the last decade.
That's the way it should be.
In a democratic state, the state itself is sovereign, while the citizens are not. The rights of the citizens depend on the constitution, which can be changed according to a democratic process. The EU is a union of sovereign states. Due to that sovereignty, decision-making in the EU cannot be fully democratic, as that would violate the sovereign rights of the member states.
There is a foce that can build up. If the U.S starts going rough someone else will take its place. We've already seen pieces moving during Trump's term. U.S's soft power helps it more than you think.
North Korea is more "sovereign" than the U.S. in your book. Good economic and political relations with your neighbours can make you more powerful than being a sovereign lunatic.
In practice, the US can do much more of whatever it pleases than North Korea can. The US can invade most countries on a whim, and has demonstrated this ability numerous times in living memory, while the North Korean government mostly just fumes for the past few decades. But more to your point, yes, North Korea has more sovereignty than most; they are one of the few countries America can't invade on a whim.
The bottom line is that the "paper treaties" allowed the world to function and create economic growth/trade not a sovereignty dogma. I think the total sovereignty dogma didn't exist even in the medieval times. Its roots are rather religious. I'm not sure where you want to go with that. Certainly not towards prosperity.
You don't want international treaties with nations you can't invade or what's exactly the gist of it?
Being a super power has benefits. That doesn't mean you can break economic treaties without consequences or that you can invade countries every time you don't like their economic policy. Bad behaviour brings reputational damage. Wars are costly(economic and politically). Soon enough you may find yourself alone and that you are not a super power anymore(i.e Russia).
Being a small country like NK or the UK you can play ball with the system or become poor. If you want to change the system you must be a super power and/or have powerful friends(i.e not sovereign)
Secondly France has huge problems with sovereignty because it can't make a computer. That's the impediment to their sovereignty. Nukes the have, that's not the issue. And even America is struggling with supply lines, looks like nobody can make a computer anymore.
EU member states have voluntarily agreed that in some situations, EU law takes priority over national law. But because the member states are sovereign, it's up to them to decide how to proceed when EU and national laws are in conflict. The EU has only limited means to sanction member states that breach their laws. It cannot arrest and prosecute German lawmakers. It can't declare German laws invalid, except to the extent German institutions voluntarily follow EU rulings. It can't forcibly rewrite German laws. And in extreme situations, it can't declare Germany's Constitution unconstitutional and invalid, and it can't forcibly rewrite it.
If you have a one-party system, then all it means that the actual policy choices are made not by parties, but rather by factions or individuals within the one party, so if you want to change things, then the levers of change are obtained not by being a voter (or candidate) and having your party gain positions in the country but by being a party member (or official) and having your faction supporters gain positions in the party.
Why not vote? What is the advantage of that?
If you disagree with both of those things, voting has no positive and results only in negatives.
Also any changes that come from those institutions follow the real progress that gets made by common people.
"A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote." - Henry David Thoreau
I mean even in the DPRK, you can vote for whoever you want. Its what happens afterwards..
Does giving legitimacy to voting accomplish anytime? What about protesting the system by not voting, does that do anything?
Germany [1] and Hungary [2] played with this fire. In summary, no.
Treaties have force of law. If a country improperly ratified their EU treaties, they need to amend their constitution (if it exists) or admit they never properly joined the EU in the first place. Given the latter means economic collapse for most EU members, it’s not a hard choice.
[1] https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/06/nick-kenny-german-...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/first-eu-seen-moving-cut-money...
No country is or can be forced to be a EU member.
Just because there are economic implications does not mean the EU treaties are above the countries‘ constitutions the people actually chose to enact.
Likewise, for most of my life, my personal political and economic interests included a strong UK (still does even though I moved to Germany) and USA even though I never lived there.
However, once you decide to stay within the law it is indeed possible to have EU treaties stand above the constitution. In situations where you've added bits in your constitution that the EU treaty has priority, acting like this isn't true is simply breaking the law.
This is like saying 'yeah but what if the car turns out to be electric" if I told you to change your oil every 5k miles
Simpsons did it: "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos"
Counter In europe many elections have extremely low turnout but governments are considered legitimate
There is no codified legal process for a US state to leave the Union, and the only previous attempt caused a civil war
A member of the EU has both an implicit right to withdraw from the treaties (deriving from international customary law around treaties) and an explicit legal path to follow. A process which they control in their entirety (as in they can't be forced to stay longer than they wish by the other countries and can't be forced to leave earlier than the prescribed deadline)
In general a country can't get out of an international treaty unless the treaty itself has provisions for it. Of course the only way to enforce an international treaty, if threats or sanctions are not enough, is war.
The EU isn't really a country, it's a free trade agreement with an unusually democratic (by the standard of FTAs) process for updating its own rules.
The EU isn't just a free trade agreement and it has never been just a free trade agreement. It has always been a political endeavour.
Of course that doesn't make it a country or a nation state at all, but let's not go too far in the other direction when trying to describe it.
Really? You mean that there is something in the US Constitution that explicitly allows a state to secede?
"In the public debate over the Nullification Crisis the separate issue of secession was also discussed. James Madison, often referred to as "The Father of the Constitution", strongly opposed the argument that secession was permitted by the Constitution.[29] In a March 15, 1833, letter to Daniel Webster (congratulating him on a speech opposing nullification), Madison discussed "revolution" versus "secession":
I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession". But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy."What do you mean by this? If I (a dictator) were to hold an election but require 90% approval to unseat me, that would be a "legitimate" process because it includes voting?
Do you not understand what I am saying?
> What about protesting the system by not voting, does that do anything?
Arguably yes. Afghanistan's state legitimacy collapsed as basically fewer than 10% of people voted in any of it's elections and then the government fell.
The people in charge are the ones who pick the two almost identical candidates. There will be no change in economic or foreign policy regardless of winner.
(Edited, the other way is to push hard core identity politics where demographic groups are owned by certain parties, so voting has all the legitimacy of a mere census. The only way to influence policy would be having (or not having) children)
If things went so far that the secession is desired it is already a civil war, and constitution of 'some people out there over the creek' doesn't matter.
I think that was the lesson of the 1860s.
Counter is that participation in European country elections is also low, though probably higher than 10 percent, but that didn't cause them to fall