French "Three Strikes" Law Gets New Life

Kjella writes "A little over a week ago we discussed the EU's forbidding of disconnecting users from the Internet. But even after having passed with an 88% approval in the European Parliament, and passing through the European Commission, it was all undone last week. The European Council, led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, removed the amendment before passing the Telecom package. This means that there's now nothing stopping France's controversial 'three strikes' law from going into effect. What hope is there for a 'parliament' where near-unanimous agreement can be completely undone so easily?"

Comments

Re:Well that's what you get

[Nursie]

We elect the european parliament.

Just not the commission. This must change, starting with the scrapping of the commission.

EU - Dictatorship or Democracy ?

[theocrite]

A little note. From the article :

The European Council, led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, removed the amendment before passing the Telecom package.

Well not exactly.
First of all, this is the Council of the European Union, not the European Council. Everybody confuses them (and also with the Council of Europe, with is not related with European Union. Someone even mixed up with the European Commission some comments above). Some people argue that people make things hard (like similar names hard to remember), so that it's harder to fight (you can't fight what you don't understand).

Also, the Council wasn't led by Sarkozy, but by Luc Chatel, secretary of State for Consumer affairs and Industry. But it's true that nobody in the French government would have the guts to make Sarkozy unhappy on purpose. They are totally devoted to him. So incidentally we can indeed say that Sarkozy led the Council even if he wasn't here.

Laquadrature published something more accurate : Citizen safeguards striked out in EU Council

This means that there's now nothing stopping France's controversial 'three strikes' law from going into effect. What hope is there for a 'parliament' where near-unanimous agreement can be completely undone so easily?"

Woa, kinda alarmist, don't you think ?

The text hasn't been adopted yet. You can fin a nice diagram describing where we are in the current procedure. The step described in this article is the point #4=>#9. The next step will be #11. But first, there will be a tripartite meeting (Council + MEPs + commission) and probably a #10 as commission and council doesn't agree.

So there will be a second reading by the EP. So please stop saying that UE is a dictatorship. There are a lot of things to notice before we can say that :

• As you can see on the diagram 1/ there will be a second reading by the EP 2/whatever happens then, after the second reading by the council, the act cannot be adopted without EP approval (steps #15, #28 and #30).
• At any moment, the commission can change the text (or withdraw it).
• Remember that the two legislative chambers are composed by MEPs (elected), and by ministers (witch are named, this is true, but you elected the guy who names them).
• As a French, I can say that it's way much easier/friendlier to reach MEP, than member of my own national parliament. I can argue with them (and by them, in most case, I mean their assisants), I can know what they do, what they vote etc. For example : if I want to know who voted for 138, then I just wget the pdf from the EP webside, and I can see a list of names page 43 : http://quadrature.theocrite.org/results_of_roll_call_votes_20080924.pdf . This allows people to script the results and make it more user friendly, like this : http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Telecoms_package_directives_1st_reading_details_by_score . Pretty transparent for a dictatorship, isn't it ?

Again, nobody says that EU is perfect. Of course it isn't. But saying that "The EU is a great idea but the execution is terrible.", or other thing I read in the comments, seems disproportionated to me. It's probably due to the fact that the article was mis