Interesting - will the EU apply this to themselves?
'Mr Watt claimed that corruption was "permitted to flourish to the benefit of all the institutions' elites" and said that despite his action and that of other "whistle-blowers", the EU accountancy system was now "so degraded it cannot police itself".'
'According to Quatremer, severe pressure and even harassment is an ongoing problem in the European Commission, and several officials in the Commission’s legal service are reported to have committed suicide in the last years.'
The first piece is from 2002. A lot of things have changed since, including MEP salaries and the expense system (which has become more transparent).
Laura Pignataro's story is a sad one indeed, and the Selmayr affair as a whole was probably instrumental in getting impetus behind this directive. Selmayr himself will probably be removed once Juncker goes at the end of this year.
Most MEPs claim the maximum office allowance, with only a handful reimbursing the parliament for unspent funds. There is no requirement to provide invoices, receipts or any details on how the funds are spent.
The ECJ has even ruled that forcing MEPs to divulge how their allowance is spent would undermine their privacy.
It gets much funkier. A lot of the representatives from East European nations fly but have someone drive there and back again with the representatives' car because that way they can claim reimbursement for both travel expenses, and car travel isn't reimbursed based on cost-of-living but a flat (West Europe based) tariff.
> Travel Allowance - This allowance is for travel to the Parliament [...] on presentation of receipts MEPs are refunded the actual cost of any travel tickets purchased by them plus time and distance allowances for attending official Parliamentary meetings
If I were a head of state, I would want all the organisations which constitute a non-trivial part of my budget [1] to have good accounting practices and, by extension, whistle-blowing protections.
Is there any reason why someone who is more interested than me in becoming a head of state may think otherwise?
[1] which I define politically as “could I get a headline out of lowering income tax, national insurance, or non-UK equivalent term, by cancelling this line item?”, and I think the EU counts as such for the UK. 1% GDP, IIRC.
To play devil's advocate: heads of state are usually ultimately in charge of these departments, and if some corruption were to be exposed by a whistleblower it might be bad for their re-election bid. They may see it as a potential way to self-incriminate, even if they personally had no involvement. To claim they had no idea is just as bad, it shows voters they are a weak leader who has no accountability in the departments they are ultimately responsible for.
If it's winner takes all then you're right. The head of state is indeed in charge of all departments.
If it's more of a parliamentary system then the head of state needs to put x members in charge depending on the outcome of the vote. So if there's x percentage points of the population who voted for the opposing party then x percentage members of the cabinet should be of the other party.
When it's not winner takes all, it doesn't matter if a percentage of the population thinks someone is a weak leader. The other percentage will still have a say in the executive branch of the government. It becomes trickier as a leader because you not only have to have support of your own party but also from your coalition partners. (EU multi-party politics in a nut shell)
Before anyone responds, I'm not claiming this is better or worse than other systems!
> If it's more of a parliamentary system then the head of state needs to put x members in charge depending on the outcome of the vote. So if there's x percentage points of the population who voted for the opposing party then x percentage members of the cabinet should be of the other party.
I think you're confusing "parliamentary system" with something else.
Heads of state are rarely in charge of anything. Heads of government are. Heads of state are quite often figureheads with mostly ceremonial functions. Particularly among western democracies, France and the US are the exception rather than the rule.
> Is there any reason why someone who is more interested than me in becoming a head of state may think otherwise?
Corruption is the obvious one. Keep in mind that running for elections has a cost, people that pay for it are more likely to expect to gain something in return.
There is also the non-obvious but still existent problem of the Law simply getting in the way, so decision makers try to act outside of it.
If you defeat corruption you have more legitimacy, which helps you ask people to make sacrifices. More legitimacy also means you don't have to "spend" as much to be elected, particularly in the sense of patronage.
Perhaps, but the pessimist in me suspects that this natural legitimacy, which we all wish our politicians would have, is not near as effective as advertisements. Somehow, we have to come to terms with just how good advertisements are at affecting our decisions.
China's concept of legitimacy is "output legitimacy", which actually works pretty well. (Look at the old Shakespeare plays where disaster follows after the king is usurped)
"Advertising" can get you to the place where the U.S. is well where you can get 49% of the population who have 51% of the influence to think one party is legitimate (e.g. they take money from the koch brothers, kiss the ring of every republican donor, promise not to raise taxes; the left wing version is "green new deal", "tear up men accused of sexual harassment", ...) and not care what the other people think.
As far as I know the entire establishment turns against anyone that tries to defeat corruption (with different strength depending on what place we are talking about). That usually leads to lower legitimacy, not higher.
An aspiring head of state that desires personal access to the state's funds will prefer accounting practices that are irregular, and will outlaw whistleblowing on these practices.
You may wish to be a noble ruler, setting just institutions and regulations for the smooth operation of society. A petty ruler would wish to enrich themselves and their friends and not worry about the consequences.
Normally the "who watches the watchers problem" is handled via a separation of powers. I don't know much about the EU government. Does anyone know if they do this?
Yes. The European Court of Justice is independent from the political and executive structures (and gives them a fair number of bloody noses, too). But the ECJ cannot prosecute anyone if the rules are nebulous and still somewhat in flux - as they often are, because a lot of EU institutions are extremely new in historical terms.
What is required, at the moment, is strong political oversight, particularly from the media. Light is the best disinfectant.
Nothing has changed, just ask Roelie Post, a Dutch whistleblower: “ne of the first to uncover corruption scandals was Roelie Post, an official at the European Commission in Brussels. In the late nineties she worked for the EC on the issue of children’s rights in Romania. They had to be resolved before Romania’s accession to the EU was possible.
Post was faced with opposition and threats that are so serious that she is now living in hiding in a village in the north of the Netherlands and that she has a long-standing conflict with her employer, the EC. It does not recognize her as a whistleblower and threatens with punitive measures.“
That is a very serious shortcoming. Government whistleblowers need protection too. Governments have shown time and time again that they are very capable of breaking the law too. They should not be above accountability.
This article explicitly lists corporate whistleblowing, not government whistleblowing.
I keep seeing comments drawing parallels to Snowden and Assange, but they were leaking government wrongdoing (should I say perceived?) publically, not corporate wrongdoing. Nothing in here suggests that if some EU nation was committing some crime that you could parade the facts around publicly with no ramifications.
Even the US has a fair amount of protection for corporate whistleblowers, however they don’t take kindly to people revealing government secrets publicly. There are ways to whistleblow internally, assuming that said thing isn’t something the whole government is in on (such as the Snowden leaks).
They even give an economic argument for this law. In a report to the EU commission they estimate this will result in potential benefits in the range of 5.8 to 9.6 billion euro.[1] This is only for public procurement.
The two main conclusions of this study are "There is a strong economic case for whistleblower protection" and "Whistleblower protection must be effectively be implemented to reap the rewards"
There was a lot of discussion on this matter in Germany and other European countries, back when he left Hong Kong and got stuck at the airport in Moscow. But nothing came out of it really. Despite many EU countries having laws that would have allowed granting him asylum, there was too much pressure due to the fear of U.S. retaliation if any country decided to go ahead with that move.
- the sitting US President is an unpopular one, picking a fight with him is not particularly unpalatable in Europe at the moment;
- this directive, once translated into national law (which, admittedly, could take some time), will probably grant Snowden explicit protection from extradition in some countries (many extradition treaties require equivalent crimes te be present into local legislation);
- the HK families of refugees who helped Snowden back then, have recently been accepted into Canada to protect them. This is a signal that the taboo is somewhat broken.
- the EU parliamentary campaign has just gone into full swing. It's the perfect time for grand gestures, particularly from governments that feel under assault by populist forces.
" this directive, once translated into national law (which, admittedly, could take some time), will probably grant Snowden explicit protection from extradition in some countries "
There's nothing to indicate this would happen.
"the EU parliamentary campaign has just gone into full swing. It's the perfect time for grand gestures, particularly from governments that feel under assault by populist forces."
So the EU is going to make a 'grand gesture' by poking the entity that provides it's security in the eye? For what reason? An intervention into US domestic affairs?
Trump could feasibly respond by pulling US forces out of parts of Europe under threat by the Russians, i.e. the Baltic states which Putin has been trying to drag back under Russia's thumb in the same way they did Crimea, only to be thwarted by a solid NATO response coordinated and backed by the Americans.
And of course the fact there's a trade war brewing for which the Americans have a little bit of an upper hand with a major trade deficit.
It would be a huge mistake for Europe to unnecessarily provoke Trump at this point.
Most extradition treaties require extradatable crimes to have an equivalent in local law. This directive, once adopted nationally, would explicitly ensure Snowden's actions are not crimes, hence effectively shielding him.
> So the EU is going to make
When it comes to foreign policy, there is no "the EU". There are 27 (+1) states with different aims and priorities. See for example the current crisis in Lybia with France effectively supporting one (murderous) side over the other (slightly less murderous) side that most EU countries still support.
> An intervention into US domestic affairs?
Snowden's actions were clearly global in nature.
> Trump could feasibly respond by pulling US forces out of parts of Europe
Which may or may not have anything to do with the country that accepted Snowden. Trump could also launch thermonuclear war, on that line of thought. Please don't go hyperbolic, there is no need.
> of course the fact there's a trade war brewing
"Brewing"? I don't think we are living in the same universe. The Orange One has waged war from the minute he got in office.
> It would be a huge mistake for Europe to unnecessarily provoke Trump at this point.
As I said, there is no "Europe" as such, on these matters. But I understand it's difficult to appreciate from that side of the pond.
"Snowden's actions were clearly global in nature."
No, they were not. The legal consequences of his actions have nothing to do with Europe.
"Trump could also launch thermonuclear war, on that line of thought. Please don't go hyperbolic"
??? Your words are hyperbolic, not mine.
Trump and the Americans should and well remove their military protection of the EU - the current state of affairs whereby Europe has an external party pay for their security is 'hyperbolic' and untenable. Hypocritical, actually.
This is a realty that clouds all discussions.
"As I said, there is no "Europe" as such" - yes there is. Trade negotiations are done at the EU level. The 'trade war' is between US and EU, not between US and France/Germany. Tariffs are applied to them equally.
Finally: Snowden is not a whistleblower. Some of his actions are tantamount to whistleblowing, the rest are tantamount to high treason. Snowden released a lot of information on how the US spies on foreign adversaries, such as Russia, which has nothing to do with 'whistleblowing'. His whistleblowing activities can be pardoned, but he'd be in jail for the rest of his life, or executed for treason.
“Rule of Law” also means following the extradition treaties you signed. And contrary to HN, countries such as the UK simply believe that the rule of law is also somewhat intact in the US, and that therefore claims of political prosecution are somewhat frivolous.
Ah, yes, the extradition treaty that allows the US to request the UK to remove a refugee from an embassy to be sent to the country from which he was granted refugee status for.
I forgot that one.
Or maybe it has to do with the IMF granting a huge loan package to Ecuador just before they removed his refugee status.
But nah, it isn't that, it's probably because the US improved on human rights violations in the time he was given refugee status until today. That would make sense at least as an argument, even if it ignores the reality as reported by amnesty international.
Or do you mean that the US doesn't violate human rights and therefore no one could ever get a refugee status from US corruption?
Ah, so then the extradition treaty that allows the US to request the UK to remove an Australian citizen from the Ecuadorian embassy so that Asange can be sent to the US, which is the country Ecuador gave him refuge against.
Yeah, that treaty. We who don't see this as lawful are just silly gooses, the gov said it is fine. It must be.
I forgot the treaty where powerful countries get to pressure small countries into giving up refugees.
a reason why exactly asylum seekers remain vulnerable is that they are effective bargaining chips. this makes them toxic for an "ally" and would undo years of foreign policy & soft power. I wish Germany would do provide Snowden with asylum but I can't see it happening considering what Germany has invested in the US.
the case Assange, and Moreno show what happens if only the internal politics of the host country swing in favor of the ally.
imo Snowden is safest in Russia which is unlikely to be an US ally any time soon.
"> The Nine Eyes Alliance refers to the same group plus Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway. The 14 Eyes Alliance adds Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden."
Merkel would probably like to play "anti-Trump pretend-hero" now and protect Snowden, if the situation were to happen now, with Trump as US president.
However, back then, like everyone else, Merkel was bewitched by Obama's silver tongue - despite him literally spying on her at the same time, but that only ended-up with her having to feign outrage at the discovery.
In Germany the explanation was that under international law he could only apply for asylum if he was actually in the country. Meanwhile nobody wanted to contractually guarantee him asylum would be granted because it was seen as interfering in the division of powers (and might be overturned by the constitutional court).
Hmm, is that true for any EU nation? I'm almost sure it's not true for the Czech Republic. At least our politicians are using it as an argument nearly every day and no one had yet made that point.
Possibly but you made the initial affirmative statement of 2% of GDP. You should be able to source that and get the answer to your question about Czech.
The cost benefit ratio would be off. Offering asylum to Ed Snowden would allow them to virtue signal, but that would be the extent of benefits. The costs including pissing off the US who could make life miserable for them.
Everybody claims to love whistleblowers and truth until they are the target of the expose.
Take Assange and Manning. He was loved and praised by the left when he exposed war crimes primarily of the bush era ( iraq, afghanistan ). The right hated him as a foreign spy and hacker. A few years later, Assange exposed the left and now the left hates him for being a foreign spy and hacker and the right ( at least some of them ) loves him.
These "high-level" protections is meaningless if the whistleblowers target the truly powerful. Then all kinds of accusations and charges will be used to take down the whisteblower.
> A few years later, Assange exposed the left and now the left hates him for being a foreign spy and hacker
Bernie and a bunch of Democrat front-runners criticized his arrest. Corbyn did too. Hillary Clinton hates him (for showing her dirty tricks on the DCCC), but not exactly "the left".
The trouble with trumped-up charges, is that often outsiders don’t have the capacity to determine that they’re bogus. I mean, the point of extradition is a trial, and the point of a trial is to determine guilt.
Of course, as you seem to he referring to Assange, just remember the UK is (it claims) leaving the EU, and is currently run by people who don’t really know what they want but are fairly sure that whatever it is involves getting on well with the USA.
> and is currently run by people who don’t really know what they want but are fairly sure that whatever it is involves getting on well with the USA
Bit offtopic for this thread, but I'd call that a very peculiar read of the situation. The Withdrawal Agreement that May is pushing involves a permanent de facto customs union with the EU, ongoing regulatory alignment with the EU, and military integration with the EU. That doesn't leave a whole lot of room for the US.
May's plan absolutely does not call for a permanent customs union. That's rather been one the larger sticking points. It's what the opposition party, Labour, wants but can't get.
And if you leave your shiny new car in the wrong part of town with the door open and the keys in the ignition, you're not calling for it to be stolen, but you know damn well it's going to be.
May doesn't want to call it a customs union, because her 2017 manifesto committed to leaving the Customs Union, but that's absolutely what it amounts to. I don't know whether Labour really want it, or even understand what it entails; I suspect they mostly wanted a point of disagreement with the government.
What May actually believes I suppose I don't really know. But a large portion of the hard-line Tory Brexiters are adamant that it isn't a permanent customs union and absolutely will not allow the backstop option to become such. It's that very sticking point that has lead to her lack of support for the plan within her own party. The apparent contradiction vis-a-vis leaving your car in a bad place is largely due to that same hard brexit wing wanting both to eat their cake, have it too, and maybe steal all the cake from the rest of the EU (that last part is probably an exaggeration. cake is delicious and no one in their right mind would let it be taken away or even deprive another person of it.)
I think you're deeply confused about who believes what.
1. May is not and has never been a Brexiter. I honestly can't understand how anyone still thinks she is.
2. If by "hard-line Tory Brexiters" you mean the ERG, they absolutely hate the WA, largely because it ends in a customs union. If you know of an exception, I'd be interested to hear who it is.
3. The "cakeism"/"cherry-picking" thing is almost entirely May. The voting public was told before the referendum that Leave meant leaving the Single Market and Customs Union completely. May's manifesto at the 2017 election said the same. Insofar as there was a mandate, that was it. She had absolutely NO mandate for suddenly pulling out that weird Chequers monstrosity; nobody ever wanted it except her and Olly Robbins. Your "hard-line Tory Brexiters" (and a lot of the softer ones) almost universally want a WTO exit at this point, with no special treatment, because May has wrecked any chance of getting anything better.
1. Almost all Remainers think May is a hardcore Leaver, because of what I’m about to say for 3.
3. Except for anyone who heard or saw:
“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the Single Market” - Daniel Hannan MEP
“Only a madman would actually leave the Market” - Owen Paterson MP, Vote Leave backer
And anyone who knows that Norway is in the single market who heard:
“Wouldn't it be terrible if we were really like Norway and Switzerland? Really? They're rich. They're happy. They're self-governing” - Nigel Farage
“The Norwegian option, the EEA option, I think that it might be initally attractive for some business people” - Matthew Elliot, Vote Leave chief executive
“Increasingly, the Norway option looks the best for the UK” - Arron Banks, Leave.EU founder
1) I think she wants to leave. Why she wants to leave is hard to say. I'm inclined to think it's as much cynical political opportunism as anything else. It's what she campaigned on and has shouted since becoming PM. Certainly she's not in the ERG range of things though.
2) I thought that was pretty much what I'm saying. ERG types dislike May's plan because it has no legally binding guarantee for when the Backstop would end. That's probably a good thing on giving ample time to thread the needle (which may be impossible) on a compromise that won't spike the Good Friday Accord and start folks trying to blow up cake all over again. In this case, cake is people, cars, and buildings.
3. Yes. Cake, as I said, is fantastic. Here though, there's no majority in favor of any particular flavor, and most people are perfectly satisfied to deny cake to everyone that doesn't want their flavor. It's become sort of a "I'll have my cake and eat yours too" situation. I'm not sure the metaphor matches all that well at this point, but I really want some cake right now so I'm sticking to it.
OK, I'm calling a severe case of Cake Derangement Syndrome and revoking your cake privileges. For the sake of both your mental health and your incipient diabetes.
Last I checked, Corbyn has requested something that isn't actually a customs union, but wants to call it that, but May actually does want a customs union, but doesn't want to call it that.
Near as I can tell, apart from the hard-line Brexiters that would be perfectly happy with crashing out of the EU without any deal, May and the other Tories want something resembling a customs union that retains the sovereign right of the UK to withdraw at any time and also make deals with non-EU partners on vastly different terms than what they have with the EU. This was a major part of the anti-EU sentiment: Being in the EU, you can't just make a deal with another non-EU country. Corbyn, regardless of what he actually wants out of any sort of Brexit, I believe is now angling for a General Election that would likely swing at least a little more support towards Labour. Despite the large EU Remainer elements in Labour though, Corbyn is himself about as much anti-EU as some folks on the Tory side, albeit in a different direction.
The policy itself doesn't matter. The entire point is that your government has elected a prime minister that is in disagreement with almost the entire parliament which does not want the withdrawal agreement you are talking about. So the only options remaining are delaying brexit again (wouldn't surprise me if they keep delaying it until 2025+) or a hard brexit which makes relations with the US just as likely as relations with the EU.
> the only options remaining are delaying brexit again (wouldn't surprise me if they keep delaying it until 2025+) or a hard brexit
The other option is revoking Article 50, either openly or disguised as a second referendum with no Leave option. Neither would particularly surprise me at this point.
ETA: I still wouldn't rule out some form of the WA passing, though. Everyone in Westminster is in blind reactive panic mode now; it's not exactly conducive to good decisions.
A second referendum with no Leave option would I suspect be political suicide for whoever organized it.
Instead, the referendum should have a Leave option - a specific Leave option. Not an amorphous, everyone-can-think-it's-whatever-they-want option, but a concrete, well-defined, specific option. That option would almost certainly lose, since all the Remain people would vote against it, and so would many of the people who want some other flavor of Leave.
The problem is that there are several different flavors of Leave: There's hard Brexit, and the customs union, and May's deal, and maybe one or two others. None of them has a majority, either in Parliament or among the voters. But I'm not sure that Remain has a majority, either (it didn't in the referendum, and at least in Parliament, there's a feeling that remaining in the end will be regarded as a betrayal of the referendum).
Then there's the problem that May seems to feel that the most urgent task at the moment is not cleaning up this mess, but rather keeping Corbyn out of the PM position.
All this makes it almost impossible to find a way forward. However, I would say that May's deal is dead, no matter how many times she keeps trying to bring it up for a vote in Parliament. And Parliament seems to be indicating that it will take the reins out of May's hands rather than permitting her to run them (willingly or not) into a hard Brexit. The EU seems to be against the idea of perpetual delay (though it remains to be seen if they will blink when push comes to shove). That leaves revoking Article 50 or a customs union as the only options available (unless the EU blinks and keeps blinking, or unless Parliament is willing to let May do a hard Brexit).
Or so it seems to me. In this mess of a situation, who knows whether I'm right...
I'm curious that you say "May's deal is dead" but then say that a customs union (presumably tacked on to May's deal) remains an option. Surely they're effectively the same thing? May's WA already leads to a customs union in practice, it's just evasive about coming out and saying so. Maybe a ref on WA+CU-explicit versus WTO is what's needed, but let's be honest, they're never ever going to run that one.
Maybe a solid kicking in the May elections (EU and local) will concentrate minds a bit, but I'm not hopeful. I can easily see both main parties disintegrating soon, at which point we're really off to the races.
I said that May's deal (the WA) is dead because of the degree to which it has been rejected in Parliament. I said customs union as a possibility in terms of CU minus the non-CU parts of the WA, that is, something rather distinct from the WA. I said it remained as an option because I didn't know enough to rule it out.
Now, you could be right that either May (or her successor) would never be floated as an option. Or it could be that it is not possible to get an agreement on those parameters (CU minus the rest of the WA) with the EU. Both those could be perfectly valid reasons this would never fly. I was just trying to list the possibilities, and rule out the ones that looked to me like they were dead.
> I can easily see both main parties disintegrating soon
Parties can disintegrate when they aren't well aligned with what becomes the dominant issue of the day. This looks to me exactly like what's happening in the UK, especially with the Tories. But maybe new parties that actually correspond to positions on Brexit would be better than the incredible muddle that currently exists...
Very off topic, but the backstop is only meant to take effect if no other agreement can be made by the end of the transition period. If it does take effect, it's meant to be temporary until such time as a more permanent deal is agreed (although it's true it could last indefinitely if no such agreement is ever made).
Yes, but the EU has both the ability and every economic incentive to refuse any permanent agreement that doesn't give them at least the same level of UK lock-in. The "temporary" is a figleaf to try to sell the WA to domestic voters and MPs; I don't think anyone takes it seriously.
You're reading too much bad/biased reporting. Anyone who ever worked in international relations or trade knows that the worst case is uncertainty. It's neither in the UK's not in the EU's interest.
It's quite weird to see how much the news and information cycle in the UK is based on rumours and quotes of random MPs. Like, seriously, try to think for a second from the EU's perspective and it's just plain obvious how it's not in the EU's interest to keep the UK in an arrangement that it's uncomfortable with and that has no clear legal standing. Everything gets more costly and complex - think just of external trade negotiations, import taxes, quality standards and norms, etc which all fall into a place of uncertain "could change at any minute" state in such a situation.
The EU is not some weird evil creature.thstsboutnto get you. The EU is the set of countries that for decades have been your closest allies. No one is trying to rip you off. Except, it seems, for the Tories that prefer to divide the UK and insult all their allies over internal power struggles, rather than actually try and act in the country's interest.
> it's just plain obvious how it's not in the EU's interest to keep the UK in an arrangement that it's uncomfortable with
It's very much in the EU's economic interest to keep the UK as a captive market for their exporters. It's very much in the EU's financial interest to put the UK on the hook for any liabilities it cares to dream up. It's very much in the EU's institutional interest to inflict a humiliating defeat so as to dissuade other members from leaving. And I don't see that if the WA goes through there'd be much "uncertainty"; the UK would be screwed, no two ways about it, unless it throws Northern Ireland under the bus.
It'd be nice to imagine that broader, fluffier, more forward-thinking interests were being considered as well, but I haven't seen any sign of that so far.
I do think a lot of people in Europe and elsewhere are misinterpreting the anger in the UK at the moment. No, the EU isn't evil or malicious; it's acting perfectly rationally according to its interests as it sees them, and those interests make perfect sense in a realist view of IR. It found itself pushing on an open door with Theresa May and it'd be wholly unrealistic to expect it to stop pushing out of some weird sense of fair play. The anger is about the EU, but it's mostly not directed at the EU; it's directed at the UK political establishment.
The choice of words matters. Any type of self preservation by the EU is demonized as evil self interest.
positive wording -> negative wording
Keep 4 core principles of the single market as written in the "constitution"? -> EU is strong arming the UK and trying to punish it in negotiations and is not willing to even give small concessions.
UK is part of the EU until Brexit negotiations have been concluded -> EU has the upper hand in negotiations.
EU wants to avoid a hard border and the potential societal unrest at all costs with the backstop -> EU is trying to tie the UK into the customs union indefinitely with the backstop. / The EU is trying to impose a border between northern Ireland and the mainland.
I mean seriously what did you expect? Negotiating the constitution of a country or political union isn't realistic at all. It was never going to happen unless the other party wants to voluntarily self destruct itself. Do you think Russia could renegotiate the abolishment of human rights in the US to arrest political enemies abroad? Because that's just as silly.
Heck I've also read this gem recently (paraphrased):
Copyright directive passed with significantly more than 70% of the countries voting in favor -> The EU is threatening the sovereignty of member states by passing laws to countries that have voted against them.
The problem with the EU in this case isn't the democratic process. It's the fact that countries voted in favor of it at all.
I'm not sure who you're arguing with here, but I don't think it's me. The word "evil" only appears once in my comment, immediately preceded by the word "isn't".
Doesn't the backstop apply only to Northern Ireland, though? It's even why the DUP rejects the agreement — because different rules would apply to NY.
The EU is actually not that interested in keeping the backstop indefinitely because it sees the risk that NY will be used by UK companies as a backdoor to the single market.
IIUC, May insisted the backstop would be UK-wide, but not everyone seems to agree with that claim, including at least one DUP MP who thinks (or thought) it’s NI-only.
Simultaneously, many people seem to have a problem with it being UK-wide, and would be absolutely fine with it being NI-only.
Other people have a problem with both options, and yet seem to think it’s incapable of being a problem because everyone agrees a hard border would be a problem.
I really hope I’m accidentally straw-manning that last group, it would be really bad if my perception is correct.
It’s not about control, it’s just that they don’t have to extend anything beneficial to the UK at the EU’s expense. Basically the UK wants a divorce, and they’re pissed that they’re not getting what think they deserve. Whatever control issues exist are due to a treaty the UK freely entered into, and choices (like getting married) have predictable consequences. If you decide freely to marry me, then unilaterally decide to divorce me, you wouldn’t be shocked if the result was a compromise between what you wanted in terms of property and rights, and what I wanted right?
Of course the EU is going to push for every inch, and since they don’t even want Brexit that gives them a lot of power. That was (or should have been) obvious from the get-go.
Yes, it all should have been obvious. But the Brexiters campaigned for it on the promise that they would secure every benefit of EU membership without having to put up with the perceived downsides, and they did this quite vocally. So now much of the opposition to May's plan come from within her own party which does not want to be seen as having failed to deliver on promises that were never realistic to begin with.
Not at all. You're thinking in antagonistic terms. The EU wants the closest possible link and alliance - this is not furthered by forcing the other party in a position where they are unhappy. What the EU is concerned with is that the 27 other countries don't suffer excessively due to the UK's bad internal political process.
The EU wants legal certainty and had committed to protect the good Friday agreement. That's why there is a backstop. Talk to anyone in Ireland and they are convinced that violence will break out the moment the border is back up. That's why there is a backstop. Look at what UK politicians publicly say about how they will act - that's why it's enshrined in the withdrawal agreement - to make clear that the UK doesn't hold the rest of the EU hostage.
The UK, and any other member state, is allowed to leave the EU at any time. There is, however, nothing saying that a country leaving the EU get to keep the advantages of being a member state. Thus, the previous divorce analogy was spot on.
I have the impression that no-dealers generally believe that all EU membership benefits can be attributed to things other than the EU, or that they can force the EU to provide all important benefits post-Brexit regardless.
I mean, perhaps there’s someone who wants it so much they’re fine tearing up the residency and employment rights of 10% of the workforce while simultaneously messing up most import and export oriented businesses — tourist, service, industrial, and fishing/agriculture — and that having no further access to medical radioisotopes is a small price to pay for leaving Euratom, and who think it’s great (or at the very least ‘fine’) that the UK has already not only lost 10% of the value of the currency but also had a capital flight of approximately 20% of non-land assets…
But I think most of them hear stuff like that and say “project fear”.
So, are you one of the few people who thinks it’s entirely fine to seriously mess up an enormous part of the UK’s economy? You don’t think, for example, that such a concern is “just project fear, they need us more than we need them and will therefore give the UK a great deal”?
Theresa May is so tone-deaf she’s made 80-90% of voters think she’s on the opposite team to themselves, where half of the population think that means “Remainer” and half think it means “Leaver”.
Unfortunately, that 10-20% support for her deal means that literally no option has majority support.
No-deal and Remain both independently beat May’s deal in a direct competition.
If you put the question “do you want no deal?” to the population, almost all the supporters of May’d deal say “no”, but if you put the question “do you want to cancel Brexit and remain?” to the population, almost all the supporters of May’d deal say “no”.
If you make it a normal three-way referendum, I’ve seen Leavers complain that would split the vote.
If you make it a three-way vote with single-transferable-vote, you end up with a real-life version of Arrow’s impossibly Theorem, where voter preferences are non-transitive.
I don't think that's accurate. The vote was on Leave (with the specifics completely unspecified) vs. Remain.
Within those who favor Leave, no-deal may be what the majority want. That isn't the majority of the country, though. If you said that May's deal and no deal were the only two flavors of Leave available, then I think it would come down to 48% Remain (using the figure from the previous vote), at most 35% for no-deal, and at least 17% for May's deal. Even if the exact numbers are off, there's no way that no-deal has so much support among leavers that it has more total support than remain.
Worse, of those who support something like May's deal, some would prefer remaining to a no-deal exit. So it's unclear, if the only options on the table are specifically a no-deal exit and remaining, that a no-deal exit is what the people want.
The whole extradition process needs an overhaul. In that the jurisdiction should decide you are guilty before handing you over to some foreign power to be tried in their court system.
All but the first would be held by the ECtHR to be in violation of accused's human rights, therefore no signatory of the ECHR can extradite in any such case.
This is an idealistic world view. In reality many high profile cases are determined primarily by the political clout of the entities involved. When it comes to nations such as the US we are going to get what we want on issues that are deemed significant. The recent Huawei case had a particularly interesting illustration of this.
Under US instruction Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the founder of Huawei and a high ranking executive of the company herself. Following this event John McCallum, Canada's ambassador to China, stated that Meng Wanzhou had a strong argument against extradition for reasons including political interference from Donald Trump, the extraterritorial nature of the charges and the fact that Canada is not party to American sanctions against Iran. For context one one of those points, Trump himself has publicly stated he'd be happy to "intervene" in the case in exchange for a favorable trade deal from China.
Following internal pressure John McCallum released a message stating, "I regret that my comments with respect to the legal proceedings of Ms Meng have created confusion. I misspoke. These comments do not accurately represent my position on the issue. As the government has consistently made clear, there has been no political involvement in this process.". He was then fired by Canada's prime minister Justin Trudeau.
This does not speak to whether the charges are legitimate or not, but rather that people involved in cases like this are often in positions of immense pressure that undermines the entire system. McCallum had a 20 year political career. It's likely that his firing has now come with an implicit political black listing as well, ending that career. Such can be the cost of honesty in such cases.
From [1, page 6, 25]: "Effective enforcement of Union law requires that protection is granted to the broadest possible range of categories of persons, who, irrespective of whether they are EU citizens or third-country nationals, by virtue of work-related activities (irrespective of the nature of these activities,whether they are paid or not), have privileged access to information about breaches that would be in the public’s interest to report and who may suffer retaliation if they report them."
So there's some form of protection for non-eu citizens, but I have no idea how far it goes or how the rules will be interpreted in those cases.
He’s not being charged for what he published, he’s being charged with conspiracy to “hack” as it were. If you’re asking whether something stops being a crime because you did it for virtuous reasons, obviously the answer is no from a legal perspective.
That is what I'm asking - Assange aside, surely this can apply to any number of whistle-blowing scenarios, and whistle-blowing laws should provide protections from law under certain circumstances?
Don't the ends justify the means, especially if far greater crimes are revealed as a result?
The title of the article and the comments here show that most haven't read the actual text of the agreement[0]. This has nothing whatsoever to do with government whistleblowing but is about creating and safeguarding protections of whistleblowers under certain key aspects (e.g.: public health, corporate taxes, privacy/personal data, etc.).
I could see this as a prompter to get folks to police themselves, like to rat each other out over the articles 11/13 crap, similar to how the Americans were offering terrorist bounties in Afghanistan, prompting folks to falsely accuse annoying neighbors and the like.
But I really want to see it as a political fail-safe against multinational corporations.
>if no appropriate action is taken or in cases where reporting to the authorities would not work, whistleblowers are permitted to make a public disclosure – including by speaking to the media.
Shouldnt public disclosure be the first thing which is protected?
>Shouldnt public disclosure be the first thing which is protected?
Largely, this depends on your perspective of whether or not the entity (or government body) should be allowed to make a good-faith effort to rememdy/rectify/fix the egregious behaviour before you go running to the media. It's the same principle behind CVD (Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure).
'Mr Watt claimed that corruption was "permitted to flourish to the benefit of all the institutions' elites" and said that despite his action and that of other "whistle-blowers", the EU accountancy system was now "so degraded it cannot police itself".'
'According to Quatremer, severe pressure and even harassment is an ongoing problem in the European Commission, and several officials in the Commission’s legal service are reported to have committed suicide in the last years.'
http://www.againstcorruption.org/BriefingsItem.asp/?id=12647
http://www.brusselstimes.com/eu-affairs/14535/senior-officia...