I can't believe with our history involving the Third Reich and the Stasi that we aren't staunchly opposed. Especially with the impending political upheaval when AfD finally gets enough votes to form a ruling government. Our politicians are insanely shortsighted and somehow don't understand the danger they're enabling.
You see, we the people are staunchly opposed. But the interests of our political leaders (we all know what 'leader' translates to) do not align with out interests. So ...
The problem is that this is not a party issue. This is a leadership issue. Power corrupts. The only way out of his is a massive overhaul of the political system that makes 'professional politicians' a thing of the past.
I didn't think this was even possible. Can EU laws actually override the constitutional rights of member states? I was under the impression that the principle of supremacy isn't absolute and doesn't extend to overriding a country's fundamental constitutional rights. If that's not the case, the danger isn't limited to just Germany. With authoritarian regimes gaining power everywhere, it would only take a few of them working together to pass an EU law that makes everything fair game.
> Can EU laws actually override the constitutional rights of member states?
Sometimes yes.
> I was under the impression that the principle of supremacy isn't absolute and doesn't extend to overriding a country's fundamental constitutional rights.
What are a country's fundamental constitutional rights can be "dynamically adjusted" depending on the political wishes. :-(
> With authoritarian regimes gaining power everywhere, it would only take a few of them working together to pass an EU law that makes everything fair game.
There is a reason why more and more EU-skeptical movements gain traction in various EU countries.
Specifically for Ireland, we are the only EU member state where the Constitution ordains a referendum to validate ratification of any amendments that result in a transfer of sovereignty to the European Union; such as the Nice Treaty which we can prevent from passing on an EU level. Ratification of other Treaties without the sovereignty component is decided upon by the states' national parliaments in all other member states.
Ireland, Netherlands, and Luxembourg also have veto powers when it comes to EU wide regulations. That's why Article 116 exists.
In the particular, the Seville Declaration recognised the right of Ireland (and all other member states) to decide in accordance with National Constitutions and laws whether and how to participate in any activities under the European Security and Defence Policy.
No. The EU isn't a federation, there's no supremacy class. The member countries are sovereign and obviously can't go against their constitutions or basic laws.
> The member countries are sovereign and obviously can't go against their constitutions or basic laws
False.
> The principle was derived from an interpretation of the European Court of Justice, which ruled that European law has priority over any contravening national law, including the constitution of a member state itself.
That is sort of like a supremacy clause, and of course it's valid for the EU.
But that doesn't mean that a Swedish or German etc. court can let that override our basic law. Our basic law is after all the foundation of our law, so if something conflicts with that, it obviously can't be valid.
Privacy of communications is usually a normal law not constitutional principle, so slots perfectly fine without any supremacy issues between constitution and EU law.
Most probably because they are not in power or leading the coalition at the moment. Similar positions were held by the once similar parties in Italy before they rose to prominence, and from once bigger parties trying to not vanquish.
Power consolidation is a shared trait of every leading individual or group of people.
What did you expect? People voted for the party that gave the previous coalition a hard time because of the debt brake but totally ignored it as soon they came into power.
It's about as believable as a country with history involving the Third Reich and Stasi openly standing behind a country that the UN, and every relevant scholar on the subject, confirms is committing genocide.
In other words, it's very believable. It is incredible how billions of hours have been spent on Vergangenheitsbewältigung, and nothing has been learnt. Potentially the best phenomenon in existence at showing that humanity is, after all, so much less intelligent than it believes it is - that even after such a destructive event and so much performative effort at analysis and learning, the key takeaway did not become part of the social psyche whatsoever.
It looks like German population actually enjoys these things. Third time lucky?
edit: how would you explain lack of protests or that the authors of proposal don't face criminal investigation? After all this is authoritarian regime refresh, just without the labels.
Yes, Germany is very hypocritical, a lot of people have short memories.
On another hand, Germany is on the spotlight because it's the country which is going to decide at the end. Less critics about the usual suspects who love to restrict personal freedoms like France, Spain, Italy ..
Spain is particularly bad for meddling with the internet, mostly with regards to piracy.
While Germany has arrested many thousands of people for online speech, similar to the UK. But the UK gets much more media attention over it.
> Battling far-right extremism, Germany has gone further than any other Western democracy to prosecute individuals for what they say online, testing the limits of free speech on the internet.
Chat Control is extremist - a terrorist attack on civil liberties. If Germany were serious about its commitments, the architects behind this assault would already be facing prosecution. Instead, authorities focus on token speech prosecutions while leaving the machinery of mass surveillance untouched.
The optics are chilling: yesterday it was door-to-door searches under authoritarian regimes; today it’s device-to-device searches for wrongthink. That isn’t protecting against extremism - it’s repeating it with new tools.
Yes the arguments for free speech and privacy are self-evident. People always think they can add conditions, as if those conditions won't perpetually expand to greater and greater areas. Or become a power given to dangerous individuals who form future governments.
