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[EU]ropean democracies thread
Aldo
Hippo HoorayRegistered User regular
Hippo HoorayRegistered User regular
The European Parliament (EP) elections will be held between May 23 and 26 across all 28 member states. More than 512 million people are represented in this parliament of 751 members. Not enough people vote in these elections, yet the influence of the EP is big and there is a lot at stake.
This thread is a branch off of the Hiberno-Brittanic Politics thread, which focuses on all issues on that weird bunch of islands off the coast of proper Europe. They’re a hoot and a half, but there is a lot more going on in Europe.
I will use this OP to explain what we’re voting for and why that’s important, but the scope of this thread is a bit larger, as national affairs can also be brought up here. Do keep in mind the following:
1. This is an English-speaking forum, non-English sources are fine, but please provide a summary or provide additional English sources.
2. The intricacies of every country’s democracy are lost to nearly everyone on here. Expect all news about specific countries to be treated with a round of “huh, did not know anything about that subject”.
So the EP, is that like the House of Commons of the EU?
No, not exactly. The MEPs are directly elected by all EU-citizens and have three main roles: they legislate, they supervise all other EU institutions and they establish the EU budgets. Their stuff is then implemented by all 28 members of the EU, which are still fully functioning democracies of their own and can interpret the EP legislation to fit with whatever they’ve got going on. That means that the EU laws are not exactly the same as the laws of every individual country.
Who am I voting for?
This is the oddest thing: every country has their own list of people and parties you can vote for. This will mostly be the same parties you know from your national politics, but there are some specific EU parties and even some pan-European parties to choose from. All of that doesn’t really matter, though. Every politician that gets elected in a specific country is part of a political group. These are formed around a common ideology. For example, the ALDE are all the liberal parties and the Greens-EFO contain all the Green parties. This is quite awkward when there are two liberal parties in your country that oppose each other, yet in the EP they are part of the same party.
[urkl=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_election#Parties_and_candidates]So always look into where your vote is actually going. [/url]Maybe the party that annoys you in national politics is actually part of a political group that you would want to vote for. Some parties work with Spitzenkandater to stick a face to the group you’re voting for. These candidates will also be the most likely to become the next EP President. The current president is Jean-Claude Juncker, but he is not up for re-election. It is very likely that the German Manfred Weber will be the next president. He is a Christian Democrats from the EPP, which is the largest party in the EU by far.
Is the EU cool?
God no.
Is the EU good?
Could be better.
Is the EU important
Yeah, European countries work together in it and form a political bloc in international affairs. Then there are consumer protections in place, to name a few:
Obviously, there’s more. And obviously, every point on this list is not perfect (yet). Take for instance imported electronics: the person or company that imports the product from abroad is responsible for the quality of the product, but not everything is checked before it enters the EU market. The market is still flooded with counterfeit mobile phone chargers and unsafe battery packs.
This thread is a branch off of the Hiberno-Brittanic Politics thread, which focuses on all issues on that weird bunch of islands off the coast of proper Europe. They’re a hoot and a half, but there is a lot more going on in Europe.
I will use this OP to explain what we’re voting for and why that’s important, but the scope of this thread is a bit larger, as national affairs can also be brought up here. Do keep in mind the following:
1. This is an English-speaking forum, non-English sources are fine, but please provide a summary or provide additional English sources.
2. The intricacies of every country’s democracy are lost to nearly everyone on here. Expect all news about specific countries to be treated with a round of “huh, did not know anything about that subject”.
So the EP, is that like the House of Commons of the EU?
No, not exactly. The MEPs are directly elected by all EU-citizens and have three main roles: they legislate, they supervise all other EU institutions and they establish the EU budgets. Their stuff is then implemented by all 28 members of the EU, which are still fully functioning democracies of their own and can interpret the EP legislation to fit with whatever they’ve got going on. That means that the EU laws are not exactly the same as the laws of every individual country.
Who am I voting for?
This is the oddest thing: every country has their own list of people and parties you can vote for. This will mostly be the same parties you know from your national politics, but there are some specific EU parties and even some pan-European parties to choose from. All of that doesn’t really matter, though. Every politician that gets elected in a specific country is part of a political group. These are formed around a common ideology. For example, the ALDE are all the liberal parties and the Greens-EFO contain all the Green parties. This is quite awkward when there are two liberal parties in your country that oppose each other, yet in the EP they are part of the same party.
[urkl=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_election#Parties_and_candidates]So always look into where your vote is actually going. [/url]Maybe the party that annoys you in national politics is actually part of a political group that you would want to vote for. Some parties work with Spitzenkandater to stick a face to the group you’re voting for. These candidates will also be the most likely to become the next EP President. The current president is Jean-Claude Juncker, but he is not up for re-election. It is very likely that the German Manfred Weber will be the next president. He is a Christian Democrats from the EPP, which is the largest party in the EU by far.
Is the EU cool?
God no.
Is the EU good?
Could be better.
Is the EU important
Yeah, European countries work together in it and form a political bloc in international affairs. Then there are consumer protections in place, to name a few:
- Unified minimum safety standards on nearly all consumer products, ranging from surge protection in electronics to lead in toys.
- Various rules against acrylamide in food.
- Roaming data costs slashed within the EU, making it easy to call your mom or browse Penny Arcade when you’re travelling.
- When paying with a card or withdrawing money from an ATM in a different EU country you will not be charged extra by your bank.
- European-wide monopolies are broken up and companies like Google have had to pay huge fines for violating the rules.
- More elaborate privacy protections in the EU.
- Net neutrality is solidified in law.
- An upcoming law will ensure every consumer the right to generate, store and sell energy back to the grid. This law will also ensure that companies are not allowed to make the administrative process annoyingly difficult.
- Eco-labels on consumer goods have encouraged manufacturers to reduce the amount of energy your home electronics use.
Obviously, there’s more. And obviously, every point on this list is not perfect (yet). Take for instance imported electronics: the person or company that imports the product from abroad is responsible for the quality of the product, but not everything is checked before it enters the EU market. The market is still flooded with counterfeit mobile phone chargers and unsafe battery packs.
Aldo on
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Posts
To kick things off, there's something I'm not quite clear on, but that did sound hilarious: new Facebook rules make it so that no foreign groups can influence national elections through Facebook. What they didn't consider was that the European political groups are not official parties in the upcoming elections, so the Facebook page for - for instance - PES is not allowed to pay for ad-space, but instead all 28 individual socialist parties need to buy ad-space to all share the same article. This change in the rules came hot on the heels of the EU lambasting Facebook for privacy bullshit, so it kind of felt like a punishment for the EU.
What I don't get is whether this is actually a sensible rule by Facebook, or if they should keep a closer eye on what groups are actually democractically A-OK and which groups are not? I can understand that they just don't want to deal with another round of Russian influence on democratic elections and would rather inconvenience European Political Groups.
Excerp from the linked article:
For those of you coming from the UK, wasn't Nick Clegg a UK politician? He's now high in the hierarchy with Facebook. Guess he used his charisma to convince Zuckerberg to give him a chance.
Kind of? I know one of the European parties kicked a party out of their coalition for getting a bit too dictatorial.
But as a whole, I don't think the EU can really do much.
Glad you asked! They say they do and they are very concerned with what is happening in Hungary. Frans Timmermans, for example, decided to visit the country in February as part of his campaign.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-eu-timmermans/european-commissions-timmermans-meets-hostile-reception-in-hungary-report-idUSKCN1QB1ZV
I don't know what the other main political groups have said about these issues, as a Dutchman I just get a lot of Timmermans-updates.
Some very nice graphics too, that lets you drag datasets through the last 20 years to see trends, but apparently around 1 in 4 Europeans support populist groups.
Verhofstadt is one of the leaders of the liberal ALDE group.
@Couscous you asked about backsliding democracies. Although Turkey isn't a EU member, they are supposed to be an ally, they adhere to a lot of EU regulations so as to easily export goods to the common market and they have a large migrant population in Germany and The Netherlands.
The latest elections (that were considered a-ok by observers) resulted in a huge loss for Erdogan’#s AK Party. So a new secular mayor got installed and now Erdogan cancelled the election results and new elections need to be held. Currently peaceful protests going on in Istanbul with the defacto dethroned mayor promising new elections.
European leaders are not amused and with elections in just 2 weeks they are eager to express their opinion in Tweets.
https://www.politico.eu/article/facebook-allows-eu-wide-political-ads-for-european-parliament/
It is weird that this move happens only 2 weeks before the election and that the two Dutch liberal parties are joining him. The Netherlands is often at odds with France and the main liberal party is aiming to move current PM Rutte to a strong role in Europe after he can no longer be re-elected in The Netherlands.
It all sounds like a guaranteed failure for the liberals in Europe.
According to the NOS they want to put an end to the hegemony of Christian-Democrats and Social-Democrats and bring some new ideas to the EU? Because, yeah, if there's one theory of political thought the European Union is entirely unfamiliar with it's neoliberalism.
Oh well. Isn't going to change my vote any. Though I'm all in favour of the right fracturing itself.
Are we missing out on some exciting European Liberal drama??
This was one of his posters from the last election here
Digital First. Concerns second.
Is there some context that makes that poster less vacuous? What are they promising, free Spotify accounts or something?
Only on German Süddeutsche and Der Spiegel so far. Gonna look for English articles.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48310912
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How... terribly, horrifyingly predictable.
*= dutch independent website that helps you compare all political parties before an election by comparing your stance on various issues to the parties stances (they each have to give at least some motivation why they think so. With at least 16 parties in this election, it kinda is necessary for us.
Perhaps not.
He's just caught on tape enthusiastically and at length talking about all the illegal stuff he would really like to be doing.
Of course it would.
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I'm just impressed this hasn't yet been called "Ibizagate". (Maybe it has, and I haven't seen it.)
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We all get one do-over, surely?
"Flirting"?? FPÖ made up half the government. And as the Ibizagate showed those guys loooved Orbán and hated free press.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Last time I visited Tyrol they had some really creepy Tyrol First political posters.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Ignore the title for a moment, the thing that caught my attention was this part:
That seems uh, bad. I hope that's just the front facing web servers that don't do anything important..
Or is that just something the UK does?
Not here anyway we're in the thick of it.
Think I'll spend the rest of the day doing some laundry and maybe playing some Monster Hunter or something.
Woman > Man
Young > Old
Minority > Majority (race/ethnic/religious group)
Does not really matter much, we have list elections, but i hope it sends a message on who to run in the party list and maybe even ever so slightly pulls power away from old white christian men.
And always vote left and pro EU/integration parties.