the ECJ ruled that opt-out to be meaningless in 2011
> "... does not intend to exempt the Republic of Poland or the United Kingdom from the obligation to comply with the provisions of the Charter or to prevent a court of one of those Member States from ensuring compliance with those provisions"
this is a common criticism of the EU and the ECJ: what was negotiated by the member states during treaty revision is irrelevant if the ECJ can strike out whichever bits of it pleases at will (with no appeal/recourse possible)
> In addition, according to the sixth recital in the preamble to that protocol, the Charter reaffirms the rights, freedoms and principles recognised in the Union and makes those rights more visible, but does not create new rights or principles.
Additionally, let's consider the alleged opt out, Protocol (No 30), itself. Its Preamble literally says:
> the aforementioned Article 6 [TEU] requires the Charter to be applied and interpreted by the courts of Poland and of the United Kingdom strictly in accordance with the explanations referred to in that Article
In summary, the UK and Poland signed a legal document. They then, for political reasons, signed a meaningless political statement saying ‘we don't really like this’. Of course the political statement carries no legal weight compared to the legal document.
The ECJ has determined that this ruling will have no effect post-Brexit because it will have no jurisdiction on any case not already before it pre-Brexit.
regardless, the critisism of the ECJ still stands: it operates as a political court that almost always rules in such a way that extend the EU's power over that of its member states
even when the letter and the spirit of the treaty was the complete opposite (as in the above example)
poles should never have been able to negotiate any such out on anything titled 'fundamental rights'. It's ridiculous they have been able to do this. The price for admittance has always been that prospective members are up to EU standard on such things. ECJ is therefore correct in its judgement.
And pretty much ever since the GCHQ/conservative UK government have been freaking out about it and it's been one of the main reasons they wanted out of the EU.
The GCHQ really, REALLY wanted out of the fundamental charters of rights. I mean the ECJ has ruled like twice or thrice against their mass surveillance activities, but they've managed to buy time by "updating the law" in ways in which a new ruling was needed to show once again that their mass surveillance laws are STILL violating the charter.
My departure from the UK was initially due to the post-Brexit impossibility of fighting the latest of those laws, the Investigatory Powers Act. There is a technical difference between the EU and European Court of human rights et cetera, but politically they are seen as equivalent by the UK.
On the day thre results came in I had been of the opinion “it can’t be too bad, because only an idiot would hold a referendum on something important where the wrong result was possible” — Although it quickly became clear Brexit was inherently a terrible plan implemented by incompetent politicians, and therefore Cameron was in fact an idiot, adding to my reasons to leave the UK.
I hate to break it to you but France and Germany both have intelligence agencies that operate in the same way as GCHQ, both are allied with the NSA (although not to the same extent), and all of these governments care equally little about the matter. There is no EU exceptionalism here - their agencies just aren't quite as well funded or quite as good at hacking. But the differences are minor.
Perhaps you believe that whilst the member states are pro-mass surveillance, the EU itself isn't?
There's no real difference between countries on the matter of mass surveillance. I wish it were the case, but it's also hard to argue that they should be totally pro-privacy and shutting down their intelligence agencies when the public doesn't care and in fact, a big chunk of the public wants better protection from terrorism.
Whilst the consensus on sites like HN may well be that mass surveillance is dangerous and bad, that argument hasn't been won with the general public. At least, not yet.
> I hate to break it to you but France and Germany both have intelligence agencies that operate in the same way as GCHQ, both are allied with the NSA (although not to the same extent), and all of these governments care equally little about the matter.
I’m aware. The point is that a court that can override a government is the only way a private person like me could possibly limit such an agency to the strictly necessary — and even then only when their excess gets leaked, because the courts obviously can’t know about it before then.
Why would you want to fight RIPA? Spying was happening on a large scale, mostly unregulated. Lots of different agencies were doing it: security services, law enforcement, through to local authorities (eg, child protection social workers using social media comments in court cases) and even schools (to check whether parents lived in the relevant catchment area).
RIPA put a stop to a lot of the worst snooping, and gave real protections to citizens for the rest of it.
There are parts that are worrying (key disclosure), but so far that's not being misused.
> I'm sorry, but the will of the people is never "wrong"
The city I live in has gold-coloured plaques on the ground outside random homes memorialising all those who died because the people elected a dictator.
Democracy is “least bad”, not “incapable of fault”.
>> The city I live in has gold-coloured plaques on the ground outside random homes memorialising all those who died because the people elected a dictator.
> A Stolperstein (German pronunciation: [ˈʃtɔlpɐˌʃtaɪn]; plural Stolpersteine; literally "stumbling stone", metaphorically a "stumbling block") is a sett-size, 10 by 10 centimetres (3.9 in × 3.9 in) concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution.
> The Stolpersteine project, initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, aims to commemorate individuals at exactly the last place of residency—or, sometimes, work—which was freely chosen by the person before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror, euthanasia, eugenics, deportation to a concentration or extermination camp, or escaped persecution by emigration or suicide. As of 23 October 2018, 70,000[1] Stolpersteine have been laid making the Stolpersteine project the world's largest decentralized memorial.[2][3]
> The majority of Stolpersteine commemorate Jewish victims of the Holocaust.[4] Others have been placed for Sinti and Romani people (then also called "gypsies"), homosexuals, the physically or mentally disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses, black people, members of the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the anti-Nazi Resistance, the Christian opposition (both Protestants and Catholics), and Freemasons, along with International Brigade soldiers in the Spanish Civil War, military deserters, conscientious objectors, escape helpers, capitulators, "habitual criminals", looters, and others charged with treason, military disobedience, or undermining the Nazi military, as well as Allied soldiers.
> Did the dictatorial killing take place transparently within the rule of law?
Within the rule of law, yes — though the standards of international law were changed retrospectively after the event because of how obviously evil it was.
Transparently? I’m not sure. What would your standard be for that?
I’m not sure why you see your point as a relevant counter-argument though: the people voted, several minorities were systematically exterminated.
Someone who has by that point written a book saying that the minority he hated needed to exterminated and that the process would be bloody.
I will not name him. Naming him serves no benefit, especially as I do not wish to conflate him with Leave, merely to demonstrate that democracies are capable of being wrong.
If I were, would it be good or bad? Would it even matter at all?
Remember the specific thrust of argument in this subthread isn’t to demonise Leave voters it’s just to demonstrate that it’s possible for democracy to give bad answers. Mentioning He Who Cannot Be Named isn’t going to help separate concerns here, rather the opposite.
If that implies true answers can be bad, I agree: they can upset whoever one is trying to communicate with to the point they shut you out entirely.
History is my source of facts, not me personally. If I am not being unambiguous already, then there is more than one example of the situation I have described.
It can be morally wrong, or financially wrong, or wrong in terms of human rights, or wrong for minorities. There's many types of "wrong". Just like you can make a "wrong" decision for yourself when having to choose between two options, the society can choose "wrongly" when presented with a simple yes/no question. There's a difference between that choice being invalid and wrong.
Even that term "will of the people" is a kind of assault on rationality.
It was a vote at one time, once, 4 years ago, with a 2% victory.
The "will of the people" excludes all desires and agency from 15m+ people, who did not want this, in a civilised society subsuming those people to be "wrong" or to be ignored is a recipe for some deeply unpleasant and authoritarian thinking.
Also, 17 million people elected Hitler in 1933 in Germany, that did not make it "right". Dangerous times.
> It was a vote at one time, once, 4 years ago, with a 2% victory
What criteria should I cherry pick in order to invalidate a result? Can I apply the same logic the the one that added the UK to the EU?
> in a civilised society subsuming those people to be "wrong" or to be ignored is a recipe for some deeply unpleasant and authoritarian thinking
I didn't describe remainers as "wrong", I responded to a comment describing leavers as "wrong".
However, as to "ignored" - why not? I'm sure it's unpleasant to lose a democratic vote, but its not "authoritarian".
> Also, 17 million people elected Hitler in 1933 in Germany, that did not make it "right"
Make what right? That they elected him? or that he became chancellor?
Conflating brexit with Nazi elections is what I consider truly "dangerous". Many things happened after that election that contributed to the rise of Hitler.
> Can I apply the same logic the the one that added the UK to the EU?
Yes, and you must — otherwise the vote to leave isn’t legit in the first place.
> I didn't describe remainers as "wrong", I responded to a comment describing leavers as "wrong".
What I wrote was “…only an idiot would hold a referendum on something important where the wrong result was possible” [added emphasis]. That’s not leavers being wrong, that’s leave being wrong. Politically, it was the wrong move for the PM and you can tell by him resigning immediately. I think that alone is sufficient to call him an idiot for having called the referendum, which is what I was doing. Him and his successors being idiots is the main reason why I think this is going to be much, much worse for the UK, not the mere fact of leaving the EU, the departure from which is something I estimate to be a “economically bad but if you want it that’s your call”.
I found your comment really interesting, I think there are quite a few vested interests involved in the desire to leave the EU. This and most notably the work on tax havens the EU was doing, the UK being one of the biggest with several opaque jurisdictions being under its control. Saying GCHQ doesn’t make political decisions by downvoting this is extremely naive.
What's the value of acknowledging that some vested interests hold the view though? At face value I mean. There are lots of legitimate economic reasons to consider leaving the EU, it's not the unilaterally bad decision that's become a meme around here and Reddit, the reason I say this being that it shouldn't be surprising in and of itself as a decision.
The only economic reason I can think of is “I have a plan which requires violating EU rules, which will be more valuable than the additional trade costs that will be caused in the event that the EU continues to think that that rule we want to violate is a good rule and insists on the UK not breaking it as a precondition for a zero-friction trade deal”.
I would be more optimistic if the UK government didn’t appear to hold the position “pivot to a no-manufacturing/service-only economy while simultaneously aiming for a trade deal that only covers food, mining, and manufacturing but not services”.
> The only economic reason I can think of is “I have a plan which requires violating EU rules, which will be more valuable than the additional trade costs that will be caused in the event that the EU continues to think that that rule we want to violate is a good rule and insists on the UK not breaking it as a precondition for a zero-friction trade deal”.
That is basically true. And the economics of this sort of situation is kinda funny; the only way Britain will be materially worse off is if the EU was giving Britain a free ride before Brexit - otherwise market forces will probably kick in and not much will happen in practice. Realistically it is hard to see Britain being worse off because of anything externally inflicted. If anything, their biggest losses will be due to getting the stuff they want; like restricting migrant inflows for non-economic reasons.
> the only way Britain will be materially worse off is if the EU was giving Britain a free ride before Brexit
Isn’t that the point of the club? To give all of the members a free ride with each other? In a well-defined way that doesn’t hurt each member but still a free ride?
Hmm. EU members get advantages from each other that non-members do not get, so by leaving the EU, the UK looses said benefit, which hurts both even if everyone else in the world retains exactly the same trading rules with each as they did before Brexit.
I’m not going to be too precise with terminology, but I didn’t realise you were being precise either or I would’ve at least looked up the concept before my previous reply.
The uk could veto anything from the eu so if they wanted to violate eu law they could have stopped it being created in the first place, there is no rational reason for brexit
In practice I agree; I was trying to be generous and find a situation where it wasn’t entirely silly. I don’t believe the UK government has thought this thought, or indeed know what it has already agreed to in the withdrawal agreement.
Many EU laws are badly thought out nonsense that doesn't make anything better and often makes things worse. So yeah, that's pretty much the meat of it. Lawmaking is hard. You say yourself, you view British politicians as incompetent - so you recognise that lawmaking is a matter in which competence can make a big difference.
A simple sort of plan that British companies might have could be, for instance, to not require tons of annoying cookie popups on their websites.
In other cases expect laws to get tighter. EU financial regulation isn't as solid as the UK's is. This was a sore point after the collapse of the Icelandic banks. British regulators had raised the alarm over those banks but could do nothing to stop them because they were regulated by Iceland and under EU rules the UK had to allow them to trade. When they went pop and the Icelandic government refused to bail them out, the Brits were left carrying the can. Given that financial regulation is popular with the public I'd expect that to be one of the areas in which regulations diverge.
> "... does not intend to exempt the Republic of Poland or the United Kingdom from the obligation to comply with the provisions of the Charter or to prevent a court of one of those Member States from ensuring compliance with those provisions"
this is a common criticism of the EU and the ECJ: what was negotiated by the member states during treaty revision is irrelevant if the ECJ can strike out whichever bits of it pleases at will (with no appeal/recourse possible)