alt Hacker NewsBrussels appears to be extremely tone deaf to the basic needs of ordinary people, and taking further steps in a direction to centralize power is just going to push more people to the far right.
For example, the fact that right-wing governments in central and eastern Europe are protecting their borders, represents a very popular perspective, apparently shared by very few in the EU governing body.
Consolidating power at a moment when many EU policies are clearly unpopular seems like it will have unintended consequences.
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snowpid • last Monday at 7:00 PM
" ... apparently shared by very few in the EU governing body." Source? Given Frontex' action I doubt it.
It is really make or break for the EU "regime". This is because the EU never had a clear goal and so the project cannot be finished if it was to survive.
First it was about harmonizing law and standards, then the Euro and stabilizing and rebuilding the eastern Europe. All those things were good ideas and great successes, but now what?
This is why they really wanted to absorb Turkey 20 years ago, and now Ukraine, Brussels needs a new project so it can justify it's existence and expansion. So it becomes a devouring mother who keep their 40 years old kids at home and try to find new one to adopt.
The EU is also unfortunately a very pre-Internet and pre-globalization project.
Just put yourself in the shoes of the previous generations who had to imagine a system to have Germany, Portugal and Greece adopt standards to be able to work efficiently together? This is a very hard problem in 1970 or 1980.
Today if Greta from Hamburg want to get in business with Portugal she search on Google, send an email, go on a Zoom meeting with real time translation and can pay with a stablecoin. If she need to figure out some laws in Portugal she can ask ChatGPT. This was science fiction 50 years ago.
That is not even necessary, she can go on aliexpress and do business in China instantly. China is not part of the EU but it seems we are very interconnected and do a lot of business with China anyway. And your shipment from China is protected by the Seventh fleet, not the EU.
Protecting the borders or raising an army? those are not things a bureaucracy know how to do or can do... it was not designed for this.
So yes the EU is trying to find a new frontiers: physical, ideological or digital. This is why in recent year it has been a lot about regulating the Internet, social media, porn, crypto, chat, AI, etc. But regulating a technology when the cat is already out of the bag is really hard so they will have to get China level authoritarian to show some results.