One gossamer-thin silver lining in this current geopolitical lunacy is that it's likely to show the current Commission's pro-corpo anti-citizen endeavors like this, to bend the knee to US corporate interests, in an increasingly bad light. Particularly given that activating anti-coercion measures that target those very corporate interests is now being seriously discussed.
EU and the rest of the world needs to ditch their anti circumvention laws that they put in place to appease the US demands on trade deals historically. They're getting tarrif'd anyways so YOLO. I think you'd see a lot of pressures ease up that are probably putting a lot of politicians around the world in compromised or blackmail-able positions. US Tech really needs to lose this massive leverage they have over the world right now.
Given the EPP’s result after the corruption scandals of the previous administration, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Voters like a charismatic leader, and the lovely and charming deals-behind-doors Ursula did very well.
Is it a silver lining? I think it's clear that whoever runs any government is free to do whatever they want with total impunity. Dissatisfied citizens complaining on Twitter is not gonna remove any "pro-corpo anti-citizen" politician from power. And if they take it to the streets, they'll just copy the UK's playbook.
Power corrupts, and the more steps removed politicians are from whomever put them in power, the safer they are.
There's a fair chance that discordant voices in the Parliament will grow increasingly stronger, party affiliations notwithstanding. It wouldn't be the first time that the Parliament has asserted its power over the Commission.
If it becomes big enough, they can't "deport" everyone. The only silver lining in the US right now is that it is way too big (and too stupid) to pull off this sad excuse of a blitzkrieg on its citizens.
I won't say they didn't try their darnedest. But estimations at the very highest but the count at 10 million (this is a very generous number) and Germany had a population of 80 million at the time. 12% is scary, but still something you can overcome.
I really hope I'm not proven wrong, but something of that scale is nearly impossible to pull off in optics with the amount of recording we can do now. The equivalent in America is about 40m Americans being "deported". That's the entire Californian population and then some.
Recording makes it easier because you can get people on your side by making it look heroic and cool - for example, see Is-real. It's famously impossible to make an anti-war movie because explosions and machine guns look cool on-screen.
Masks have been of for a while, but as long as the EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office, it's to no avail.
It was a (steel and coal) corp affordances union to begin with, so it's no wonder it's pandering to business rather than civic interests after all.
Von der Leyen is corrupt yet shapes EU policy without backlash, and the citizenry is left to pay the price, precisely because the EU pretends to speak for the people.
> EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office
Selection/rejection of the European Commission president (there is no such thing as the EU president) is indirect democracy, not popular vote. But it is still representative and democratic.
US contrast: in the US, citizens also don't vote for the President directly. Instead, we use a two-step system centered on the Electoral College.
Hypocrisy: if anyone (especially us American citizens) are going to argue that europeans should get to vote directly for the President of the EU commission, then they should also argue strongly to get rid of the Electoral System in the US and let the presidential popular vote be the decisive factor.
>then they should also argue strongly to get rid of the Electoral System in the US and let the presidential popular vote be the decisive factor.
I don't think that's an unpopular idea as of 25 years ago now. With current technology, nationals should be a direct democracy (and with ranked choice votes, not FPtP), the house should be doubled (if not tripled since we stopped growing 100 years ago), and the supreme court should be expanded to at least 15.
And that's just the start of small updates we need for government.
> Masks have been of for a while, but as long as the EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office, it's to no avail.
The EU is basically run by the Council, who are the national governments, all of whom are elected.
It's incredibly depressing that this keeps needing to be repeated when its been this way since the inception of the EU (with a small hiatus where we were gonna get a constitution).
The Commission can propose laws, but unless the Council (mostly) and Parliament (theoretically) agree, they won't happen.
