For this reason the article seems at least a little alarmist.

It wouldn't be news that Estonian politics is delving into censorship/surveillance; tacking on "EU Presidency" just ads faux-gravitas.

There are times i wonder if politicians use EU as a "trump card". This in the sense of getting it into a EU directive and then turning around to the nation, stating as it is part of an EU directive their hands are tied...

There's a long list of cases where the UK has done this…

Could you share some?

Oh they could, and it might be easier since as far as I know, the general population has very little influence over who gets to sit in the EU government.

You mean aside from the fact that MEPs - the politicians sitting in the EU government - are elected by the general population?

Please don't use the mere existence of the "Mickey Mouse" parliament as an evidence of direct representation to the EU as the parliament have literally none of the roles or authority of a real parliament but is mostly ceremonial, like the president of the EU.

The real power is and have always been with the council of ministers who is appointed by the member governments, and in practice only responsible to the member parliaments and not the EU parliament, who barely have authority to overrule the larger and more permanent commission, let alone propose any legislation.

Don't get me wrong I am pro EU but the current structure is pretty strange and mostly dysfunctional in trying to spread the pain evenly and prone to being dominated by large corporate interest groups.

Not a single piece of EU legislation (both directive and regulation) can be enacted without a majority in the EU parliament.

The only difference to national governments is the lack of a right to initiate legislation. But in practice, they just stick anything they want into any vaguely related piece of regulation. They do have the power to amend.

Even if what you stated was true(which is isn't for all cases) it's still a complete reversal of how every single other democratic parliament works as the EU parliament cannot propose anything.

It's correct that the commission(which it itself fairly powerless) have to ask the MEP for yes and no on directives, that is not the case on all regulations passed by the council of ministers as the council can choose to bypass the EU parliament, in cases where no disagreement exist within the council.

There are significant differences:

- no power to propose laws

- process heavily skewed in such way that it's extremely rare to throw Comission proposals entirely

- current procedure for reaching comprosive between EP and Comission is: small working group hashes out compromise text with no public oversight, is then rubber-stamped by plenary

- crucially, low citizen visibility into EP's working, no oversight

The last point is, I believe, crucial. EP is a dumping ground for politicians who failed nationally and gets virtually no press attention. What happens in national parliaments is news, covered in detail, even though the importance of EP, as the place where things can be influenced, is much bigger.

It is very much disfunctional as a democracy.

the appointed commission forms the government (executive), not the parliament

the head of the commission is chosen by the parliament, and the head of the commission then appoints commissioners

commissioners have a tendency to be disgraced former national politicians who have become unelectable at home (e.g. Jean-Claude Juncker, Peter Mandelson)

The commissioners have to be nominated by member-state governments. The head of the commission doesn't really have much practical power to block them, although he gave give them more or less powerful portfolios.

The commission as a whole has to be approved by the directly elected parliament. It can also be dismissed by the parliament at any time (which has happened before).

The situation is quite similar to a number of member states (e.g Germany) where neither the prime minister nor cabinet ministers have to be members of parliament and the government itself is not elected by the people.

The MEP are not part of the government, they are part of the parliament, which is elected by the public. The EU comission (which is the government), is decided upon by the national governments. Only the head of the comission was elected (indirectly) by the people.

Edit: Btw, the head of the comission is more like what the US would think of an actual president. The president, OP talks about is more like a representing nation.

The whole Commission has to be approved by the European Parliament, not just their President. The European Parliament has forced the European Council to remove candidates before approving the Commission multiple time in the past. In that sense the Commission is more directly elected by the people than e.g. German ministers (who can be chosen at will by the Chancellor).

And of course the national governments are elected (indirectly) by the people as well which makes everyone who they elect also indirectly elected (albeit through more indirection).

The EU commission is also indirectly elected by the people in a (maybe tenuous) way. Member state populations elect their national governments, those governments put forward commissioners. They're not that much different to civil servants in national government really.

We do not elect the national goverments. We elect political parties in the national parliament who then form a government or a coalition and appoint comissioners in the EC. There is in fact little representation.

They vote for their parliaments and the EU parliament. Depending on national rules, the first nominates a commissioner, or they vote for an executive who does. The second has a veto.

It's really no more removed than any US cabinet member, especially if you figure in the electoral college–yes, that's rather symbolic. But the difference to electing a parliament which elects the executive in the EU member state is still rather small.

They definitely do that in Germany.

examples?

The ban on incandescent lightbulbs went that route (for Germany): agreed to be the right thing to do but fraught with the possibility of attack by populists decrying the nanny state.

It would surprise me if they didn't.

Has happened in The Netherlands as well, sadly.

It's not the least alarmist. The EU Presidency is an real office that has a real function, and the leaked document literally says in the first line "From: Presidency".

It's a proposal to be implemented EU-wide, not just in Estonia, so the presidency seems relevant.

But the presidency has no actual power to get it passed.

No, they have the power to "call for" it, which is what they have done (and the article says they've done).

True. One wonders what Estonia, or its government, has to gain from this, though.

It's the same thing all autocrats want which is to consolidate their power while protecting the little people from themselves.

I can see where they are coming from though; I'm pretty sure the investigations of Internet usage that turn up on politicians desks contain pretty disconcerting information about the human condition.

This seems to be focused on copyright, not "protecting the little people from themselves." I find a financial reason more likely to be behind this push.

Yes after finding and reading the document (TFA was hosed) I have totally misunderstood it's content; maybe a better headline including the word copyright would help.

Thank you for admitting the misunderstanding.

It's really dangerous to go around calling democratically elected governments "autocratic". These people really do try, and there's really no indication that any government except maybe Hungary is bent on perpetuating their power. Calling them names just removes any incentives for anybody to do well: Why bother, if you're just going to be called an incompetent autocrat anyway?

That is what I would like to see leaked. How exactly this kind of thing start.

Who have the first conversation that we finally see as "the Estonia government want x". The same I would like to know about the free trade agreements.

e-Stonia has e-Residency, and various other internet-based shenanigans. You can get an e-passport, set up business, get residency, travel documents, online, I think. Just visit your local embassy with proof of id. They are selling themselves as a digital destination/economy. Russia occasionally does massive DDoS there. so ymmv. Not sure how that relates though just surprised it was them. Maybe they are leaking it because they want it nipped in the bud.

> One wonders what Estonia, or its government, has to gain from this, though.

As a guess, it's due to the threat to Estonia from Russia, which includes Russian cyber attacks and propaganda. Russia has used propaganda operations very effectively in Europe and the U.S. If the U.S. has trouble protecting itself, imagine Estonia's situation.

In response to the same issue, earlier this year (IIRC) I read about a similar call for government oversight of Internet publication by someone high in the UK government (but I didn't hear about it again after that).

This seems like the most plausible explanation. I recently read an article[1] regarding Ukraine's struggle against Russian propaganda.

[1] http://www.npr.org/2017/08/21/544952989/rough-translation-wh...

It looks like a copyright industry lobby. So most probably somebody at some level got paid.

The presidency becomes powerful if there are things the Comission is interested in. For example conservative countries like Poland or Hungary could push this agenda in exchange for a more open refugee law or other things that are challenging EU law or regulations.

Never underestimate that.

Also, EU presidency is not directly elected by the people.

So what? It's the PRESIDENT of EU, regardless of power... It says a lot about who's in charge of EU, the globalists. That's why BREXIT occurred, that's why Trump won: to fight them.

Brexit occured because people were lied to for years and years and conditioned to believe the EU was bad.

So there is no room for people to believe that EU is really bad? So that must be a lie? Come on...

I haven't heard one decent argument for leaving the UK.

Real power sits with Merkel.

Or Erdogan ?

Turkey is not part of the EU yet. I don't see how exactly the power "sits with Erdoğan".

Well, I heard people say he controls the flow of the "refugees", so he gets to make some decisions.

He can (and does) use that for leverage, but then, so could Italy, Spain, and Greece. I don't think he can get into the EU under threat of letting refugees through though, not while there's violations of human rights and such still going on in his country.

Not part or ever will be it seems. Their application officially just recently being moved to the out tray.

Turkey also won't be part of the EU. Both Merkel and her contestant for the current election stated on Sunday, that they have had enough and want to abort the negotiations about Turkey joining.

Even if they didn't abort, recent developments in Turkey have moved them significantly further away from meeting requirements for entry .

Just because we're hitting a bump along the road doesn't mean they won't join eventually. And I hope they do, they belong in the Union with us.

Erdogan controls a massive amount of refugees. Moreover, there's one or two pipelines crossing Turkey and I'm sure that helps to control things a bit too.

Of course I'm no politician, I've no access to confidential information, but I'm sure he might use that to influence Europe (and there's nothing wrong with that, that's international politics as usual).

Erdogan and the whole European east (Greece, Bulgaria, Ukraine) expansion was always just a big part of the anti-European strategy to binge grow this polit-amobea to death. And it has worked, in so far that it has accelerated the probable demise forward by at least twenty years.

Europe was always just a half hearted dream by its elites, who where not even enough into this vision, to share their power with the institutions they created. Now after the very same dream, has allowed for the life-standard growth of most of its citizens to disappear - they are in for a rude wake up with extremists devouring the corpse.

Literally nothing you're saying makes any sense on any level. This looks more like markov-chain generated text.

There is some truth in the idea that the growth of the EU was intended to slow down the process of federalization. The UK pushed hard for the growth in the 2000's and was also a proponent of Turkey joining for these reasons.

What about over-stretching a expansionist movement as a counter strategy does not make sense?

Europe has grown hard, not smart. It never evaluated what it integrated, and as a result, is more unstable then ever.

> Now after the very same dream, has allowed for the life-standard growth of most of its citizens to disappear - they are in for a rude wake up with extremists devouring the corpse.

What are you even talking about? We just had an Australian guest, who drove freely through Europe using one currency. These states previously fought two world wars against each other.

France nearly voted nationalist last vote. All of eastern europe is basically slowly abandoning democracy and demolishing its institutions. Germany is in for a AFD government.

Sorry, but drive through tourism does not paint a accurate picture.

> Germany is in for a AFD government.

It is very much not. That's just plain false. Right-wing governments have been elected everywhere (US, Australia etc.). I don't deny that the EU has played a role, but you are painting a very dark picture of an institution which has a primarily positive influence on the world.

If 35% to 66% is "nearly" getting "nationalist vote" then yeah. You can also say that despite a huge economic recession, the unexpected influx of a large population of war refugees and on the back of Brexit, the populist far-right only got half of the votes the elected party got in the end and that's actually comforting, because scaring people off is always easier than vision and reform planification.