EU Politics: I miss Renaults(don't make fun of me)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > EU Politics: I miss Renaults(don't make fun of me)

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

In a totally unforeseeable move, Sultan Erdogan has sprung some last-minute demands on the EU negotiators and is saying he will scupper the refugee deal if they don't comply: http://www.ft.com/fastft/2016/03/07/turkeys-last-ditch-demands-threaten-migrant-deal/

quote:

Turkey has made a host of last minute funding and political demands that threaten to derail a controversial EU-Turkey deal to dramatically reduce migrant flows to Europe.
Ahead of crunch summit between EU leaders and the Turkish prime minister on Monday, Ankara has called for an increase on the �3bn in aid previously promised by the EU, faster access to Schengen visas for Turkish citizens and accelerated progress in its EU membership bid, write Alex Barker and Duncan Robinson in Brussels.
Although talks remain fluid, the wishlist represents Turkey�s new price for giving the EU�s response to the migration crisis a harder edge by facilitating the systematic return of non-Syrian migrants from Greek islands to Turkey.
A deal of some kind is still expected at the end of the summit. But four diplomats involved in the talks said that Turkey�s revised demands would be extremely challenging and could blow apart a fragile EU consensus on the sweetners offered to Ankara.
A deal with Turkey is crucial for reducing the flow of people entering Europe, according to EU officials. This has overridden concerns about the country�s asylum system and human rights record.
Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that the proposed deal demonstrated �how indispensable the EU is for Turkey and Turkey for the EU�. Speaking before the meeting, Mr Davutoğlu added: �The whole future of Europe is on the table.�
Last week Mr Davutoglu privately signalled to EU negotiators that Turkey would be willing to accept the systematic return of non-Syrian migrants to Turkey. In the final stages of the negotiation, however, Turkey made clear it would expect its EU agreement on migration to be improved.
This includes moving forward a recommendation to grant visa privileges to Turkish citizens, which was expected in the autumn. Turkey has yet to meet some of the most difficult conditions for visa access, including the recognition of Cyprus.
Ankara also wants an increase in the EU�s proposed �3bn in funding, so that it covers municipal infrastructure costs as well as health, education and material support for Syrian refugees in Turkey.
On top of these concessions, Turkey wants to speed up the already fast-tracked process of opening several new chapters in its EU membership bid. Cyprus in particular is also loathe to make further concessions to Ankara in membership talks.
One diplomat said the additional demands could make for a �trainwreck�. Another compared the haggling to a �Turkish bazaar�.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2016 13:47

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:58

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Pochoclo posted:

Can eurogoons tell me if Brexit is gonna happen or not?

Probably not - Remain has a consistent lead in the polls (see below), and a consistent large lead in phone polls, which are traditionally more accurate than online polls. On top of that the two Leave campaigns are spending most of their time fighting with each other and whining about the way the government is running the Remain campaign rather than putting their case.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 00:20

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

GaussianCopula posted:

Excuse me, but why the gently caress are your pollsters publishing ONLINE POLLS? I mean in my recent endeavours in the UKMT I learned that pretty much your whole political system is run by people who have a very strange concept of reality, but ONLINE POLLS? No wonder all your pollsters go the general election results wrong.

An online poll in this sense isn't the kind of fluff poll you get on newspaper websites or twitter where anyone can vote as long as they have the link. The pollster recruits a large group of people (typically, a few hundred thousand) to serve as potential respondents, and pays them a small fee for each survey they complete (most of the surveys will be market research for some company or other; political polling is very much a side-business for all major pollsters). When they are commissioned to perform a survey, they select a sample from that pool of respondents that is set up to be representative of the population and then only issue the poll to those selected individuals, exactly as you would with a phone or face-to-face poll. The online pollsters did have appreciable systematic error in their results for the last UK general election (basically, it turned out that their pool of respondents had a significantly higher level of interest in politics than the population at large, and they weren't sampling old people adequately - they had a single '65+' bin for older respondents, but they should've broken them down further to '60-74' and '75+' or similar), but they've performed on par with or better than conventional phone polling in a number of other cases.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 01:43

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

FT writeup of the negotiations with Turkey (paywalled; google "Berlin/Ankara migration pact � wrecking ball or silver bullet?" and click the first hit to get around it): http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2bde51d6-e4a2-11e5-ac45-5c039e797d1c.html#axzz42GOVpA9h

quote:

Of all the big-bang solutions sought for Europe�s migration crisis, a draft pact crafted by Germany and Turkey on Monday may rank as the most ambitious and politically explosive.
The concept is breathtakingly simple: any migrant arriving on a Greek island would be returned to Turkey. The temporary initiative is intended to be a short circuit for irregular migration. It goes for every one of the 2,000 migrants arriving per day, be they Syrians or economic migrants from north Africa or Asia, according to a draft of the terms.
The political price is the EU abandoning constraints that have framed its relations with Turkey for almost a decade. Strict criteria for granting European visa privileges for Turkish citizens would be all but dropped so the privilege would be available in June; a decade-long Cypriot bar on some of Ankara�s membership chapters lifted; and an extra �3bn potentially made available in 2018.
Perhaps most difficult of all for the EU is resettlement. For every Syrian returned to Turkey from Greece, another Syrian would be accepted by EU countries. It is a programme potentially involving hundreds of thousands, at a time when the EU has managed to resettle just 3,407 in its existing scheme since July.
Overall, this is a silver bullet plan to close off the Greece-to-Germany migration highway � at least for a few months. It has shocked many of the EU diplomats who had been working up an alternative on Sunday. �This has taken a wrecking ball to our common approach,� said one eurozone diplomat. �Everything is reopened.�
...
Big legal doubts hang over this scheme. Rules on asylum are quite clear: all applications have to be properly considered. A blanket return policy would almost certainly be illegal, argue refugee groups � especially to a country such as Turkey, which is not a full member of the Geneva Convention on refugees.
Only Syrians have the right to claim some form of international protection in Turkey � and even that does not equate to full refugee status. Others � even those fleeing desperate circumstances in Iraq, Afghanistan or Eritrea � have no such luck.
If the deal were to appear before the European Court of Human Rights, it would probably be struck down, warn migration lawyers. Even a less ambitious version of the returns plan, which would have covered non-Syrian asylum seekers and migrants, would probably face legal pitfalls. Leaders, however, are desperate. The wrath of judges in Strasbourg pales in comparison to fears of increasingly angry voters, fed up with a mishandled crisis.
...
Turkey�s price for accepting mass returns of irregular migrants is a huge resettlement programme. Europe would need to open up a legal route for asylum, which takes an equivalent number of Syrians straight from Turkey. This is an explosive concept in many EU member states.
Angela Merkel has always been keen on the idea and, since November, her officials have informally toyed with taking 200,000 or 300,000 refugees on a bilateral basis. Berlin insisted, though, that it could only happen if Turkey proved irregular migration had all but stopped.
More tricky has been convincing any other EU country to become involved. A �coalition of the willing� has proved decidedly unwilling. The Netherlands is potentially supportive, as are a handful of other small member states. But there are no commitments on numbers. Selling the idea in practice may prove too much for many EU leaders to stomach: one senior diplomat said the concept could be �a real killer� for the deal. Some diplomats think it may even need a mandatory quota scheme � a step that Hungary�s Viktor Orban has promised to veto. For it to work, Germany may need to lead by example.
...
Senior diplomats say that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey�s president, prizes visa access perhaps more than anything else in the package. It is a tangible vote winner at home. The trouble is that it is also a vote destroyer for many EU leaders, who would take a beating on their right-flank for giving 75m Muslims automatic access to the Schengen passport free zone. France in particular is wary of offering Turks those privileges.
Under a carefully crafted compromise with Turkey, agreed in November, the EU aimed to recommend visa liberalisation in the autumn, once Ankara adopted a readmission deal with the EU. Turkey had to meet strict criteria. And there were no guarantees EU members states would agree.
The big-bang migration deal brings this forward to June and, rather than just recommend visa liberalisation, full privileges of a Schengen visa would be granted to Turkish citizens. For this to happen, the European Commission would need to make a proposal virtually immediately and, in effect, abandon its technical criteria � including the politically vexed requirement for Turkey to recognise Cyprus and its Greek-Cypriot government in Nicosia.

I suspect a lot of EU governments will be quietly happy to see Orban and his Visegrad buddies shoot this down.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 02:00

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

GaussianCopula posted:

You all realize that the number of Syrians that try to reach Greece via boats will drop sharply once this deal is implemented and therefore the number of Syrians that need to be resettled from Turkey to the EU will be relatively low? At the beginning you might have two weeks or a month tops, in which refugees are still trying to brave the Aegean to reach Greek costs, but after that they will soon realize that such an endeavor is folly, because spending >1000� for a round trip to Kos or Lesbos might be an interesting proposal for European tourists, but I doubt very many Syrians would fancy it, especially since there is the real risk that they drown.
Furthermore it is important to understand that the Syrians that will get priority in the resettlement process are those, that already have family in the EU, which means there is a high probability that a good share of them would be able to secure their entry at a later point in time through family reunification processes anyway.
And what is Turkey getting for taking care of the refugee problem? A bit more money (who cares? It's a rounding error in most national budgets), a few (according to reports it might be as few as two) negotiation chapters being reopened and the coveted visa-free travel, which means they face fewer bureaucratic hurdles when they want to travel to the EU, but does not give them any privileges as it relates to migrating to the EU (it's not free movement of labor). It all boils down to an agreement that Erdogan and Davutoglu can sell as proof that they are not distancing Turkey from the West/EU but continue to move Turkey closer to the EU, giving them ammunition against their critics at home.

I think this is a very optimistic reading of the situation. You (and Merkel) hope that this will stop people from attempting the crossing (or shifting their attempts to Italy and trying to claim asylum there), and you hope Turkey will uphold its end of the deal even though Erdogan's plainly not negotiating in good faith and basically ignored the terms of the last deal that was struck with him. It's also a bit amusing that a few billion euros here or there is a rounding error in this context but a matter of grave importance in others.

LemonDrizzle fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Mar 8, 2016

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 10:25

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Belgium's flemish nationalist party (who are also the largest party in the country's governing coalition) are not entirely happy with the proposed Turkish deal. Google translated because Flemish: http://m.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20160308_02170755

quote:

"Never will a government whose N-VA part, approve Turkey's membership of the European Union. Never.' That set MEPs Mark Demesmaeker and Sander Loones (N-VA) following negotiations between the EU and Turkey on the refugee crisis.
"The European Union has become blackmail ', enabling the European N-VA MPs Mark Demesmaeker and Sander Loones in a press release. EU-Turkey negotiations are still on a solution to curb the influx of refugees. An agreement should come next week. During the negotiations, however, it soon became clear that the Turks insist on joining the EU.

"The Turks do there plenty of abuse, and that irritates me immensely," says Demesmaeker. He is clear about the future of Turkey in the EU: "Never will a government whose N-VA part, approve Turkey's membership of the European Union. Turkey does not belong. Ankara chooses consistently for the price of the authoritarian Middle East and builds on civil liberties again. Who has the features of an autocracy, deserves no prospect of accession. "

MEP Sander Loones (N-VA) mostly pointing in the direction of Chancellor Merkel. "The arrogance of Merkel continues to amaze. She thinks herself to be able to determine the course and does not hesitate even to circumvent European Council president Tusk. Everything asks Turkey, she accepts unquestioningly. Unseen and unheard. While they would give better long look in the mirror: her policy and that of the weak European leaders of the past has ensured that today we are in trouble. Through them we have become dependent on Turkey. We can not even control more than just our own borders."

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 11:07

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

So apparently the impetus for the new Turkish deal with resettlement and visa-free Schengen access for Turkish citizens didn't come from the Turks at all - it was pushed by Merkel, behind everyone else's back: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f6c982ec-e54e-11e5-ac45-5c039e797d1c.html#axzz42OW2bIUR

quote:

Behind the backs of some her closest European allies, Angela Merkel, German chancellor, struck a deal with her Turkish counterpart that could very well end the influx of refugees washing up on Europe�s shores � but at a very high price, including an extra �3bn in aid and a visa-free travel scheme.
...
It started with a normal, even promising EU process. On Sunday afternoon EU ambassadors in Brussels put the final touches to a summit deal that Donald Tusk, European Council president, saw as a turning point. The western Balkan migration route would be closing and Turkey had agreed to take back non-Syrian migrants. Europe�s tougher approach was taking shape.
A few hours later, and a kilometre down the road, Ms Merkel met Ahmet Davutoglu and Mark Rutte, her Turkish and Dutch counterparts, and blew that deal apart. During six hours of talks fuelled by a 1am take-out of Turkish pide, or pizza, the trio explored a bigger idea to turn back every migrant reaching Greek islands.
Unlike Mr Tusk�s version, that came with a higher Turkish pricetag: money, visas, and large-scale resettlement of Syrians from Turkey to Europe. Ms Merkel�s bet was that the deal�s arresting potential would help her at home in state elections next week.
In the event, only a half-deal was possible, mixing parts of the old and new proposal and leaving details to be sorted. During the process, confusion reigned in the corridors; presidents and premiers bristled at being confronted with Turkey�s �new ideas� as they arrived; frustrations were palpable.
EU leaders held a summit with Turkey's prime minister on March 7 in order to back closing the Balkans migrant route and urge Ankara to accept deportations of large numbers of economic migrants from overstretched Greece. The European Union is hardening its stance in a bid to defuse the worst refugee crisis since World War II by increasingly putting the onus on Turkey and EU member Greece in return for aid. / AFP / POOL / OLIVIER HOSLETOLIVIER HOSLET/AFP/Getty Images
The EU institutions that have spearheaded membership talks with Turkey for two decades felt badly undercut. One senior European diplomat directly involved in Turkey discussions said they had �never seen a situation where the EU institutions were so undermined and stabbed in the back�.
�The Germans are in a complete state of panic and disarray,� he said.
Another top adviser to the leader of a big EU country said: �People are patient. There is a willingness to tolerate this for Ms Merkel because nobody wants her weakened. But she humiliated a lot of people.�
Another eurozone diplomat called her methods �brutal�.
It was �a unilateral, unco-operative approach and there will be a price for this one day�, the diplomat said.
...
Although it was sprung on fellow leaders Monday morning, officials said Berlin had been covertly working in parallel to Mr Tusk�s effort for days.
Publicly, Ms Merkel has insisted the big-bang proposal came from Mr Davutoglu. But during the preceding week, German negotiators conducted side talks with Ankara, pressing for bolder steps.
At a pre-summit meeting with Fran�ois Hollande, French president, on Friday, the chancellor mentioned her concerns that Mr Tusk�s deal would not grapple with returning Syrian refugees to Turkey � but gave no indication she was laying the groundwork for a summit surprise.
...
For weeks, Mr Tusk has been pushing an Austria-backed plan to �close� the western Balkan route, a scheme that centred on sealing Greece�s border with Macedonia and convincing countries to the north to stop �waving through� economic migrants.
Ms Merkel had fought the plan, largely for symbolic reasons: she has resisted domestic pressure to cap migrant arrivals and has been engaged in a bitter political war with Werner Faymann, the Austrian chancellor who has repeatedly suggested Ms Merkel would follow his lead.
By shutting down the ability of migrants to move north, Mr Tusk�s allies believe they closed the window on Ankara�s ability to negotiate � if refugees were stuck in Greece, Turkey�s importance would dissipate.
Although Ms Merkel bristled at Mr Tusk�s rhetoric about closing the corridor, it may end up being her salvation � particularly if the Turkey deal collapses. As much as the sealing of borders to the south has offended her principles, it has also begun to stem the influx into southern Germany. That, in the end, is what the embattled chancellor needs.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 10:21

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

GaussianCopula posted:

Mario is at it again, throwing money across Europe hoping some of it sticks and causes inflation.

He apparently had a couple of panzerschrecks in reserve to back up his beeg bazooka.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2016 15:01

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

GaussianCopula posted:

He should just accept that he can't emulate fiscal policy without limits and stop this madness.

Perhaps if fiscal policy were more accommodating, he wouldn't need to take extraordinary measures to have any hope of reaching his treaty-mandated inflation target.

e: permitting the purchase of corporate bonds within a QE program is pretty bold, however.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2016 15:12

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/707991895960584192

oh god not again

# ¿ Mar 10, 2016 19:35

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Coverage of Draghi's expanded QE program in the German press:

!!!!Our savings!!!! :mad:

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 09:53

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Europe 2016: a newborn baby being washed over a puddle

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 21:54

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

steinrokkan posted:

the fact is that at every point the European integration program was accepted by every single nation included in it.

Aside from all the times that it was voted down in referenda, renegotiated, or simply quietly ignored, you mean?

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 01:40

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

steinrokkan posted:

You mean the single case of the constitutional treaty, which was compensated for by opt-outs and other extemptions designed specifically to aid ireland.

Please do not try to critique the decision making process if you have no idea how it works.

No, I mean the various occasions on which "the European integration program" has been stalled, pushed into reverse, or simply sidelined and left to rot. That includes but is not limited to Ireland voting down Nice, the French and Dutch voting down the Constitutional treaty, Sweden quietly but permanently shitcanning its "obligation" to join the eurozone (and rejecting the euro in a referendum), and the UK demanding its opt-outs. It takes a special kind of delusion to believe "the integration program" has "been accepted by every single nation" when one of the largest of those nations is currently throwing a tantrum and demanding more exceptions.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 02:13

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

steinrokkan posted:

So you include cases of intergovernemtal bargaining under a clear unanimity rule as violations of the unanimity rule. Nice schisophrenia, dude.

If someone puts forward a proposal for deeper integration and someone else shoots it down, the fact that the shooting happened during a multilateral discussion doesn't mean that the proposal hasn't crashed into the ground and caught fire. Your original statement only holds if you carefully exclude all the times that people have attempted to further the program and deepen integration only to have their proposals forcibly killed off or set aside indefinitely.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 02:39

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

What, like we discussed the French elections in the French thread and the Greek elections in the Greek thread?

I'm not going in there, it's full of Germans!

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 18:00

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

The summary is big gains for AfD, CDU losing one of their traditional strongholds to the Greens and generally taking a hammering, and the SPD continuing their protracted slide into powerless irrelevance.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 18:31

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Public opinion polling on Merkel's handling of the refugee crisis in the three German Laender that had elections today (green: she is handling it well, red: she is handling it badly). Can you guess which of the three saw the strongest surge in support for AfD????

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 23:38

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

YF-23 posted:

It looked like a plurality of AfD's voters are people who had not voted before and their surge was in correlation to the prevalence of poverty rather than immigrants. Nothing surprising about the latter, the former is somewhat interesting.

What are you basing this conclusion on? The overwhelming majority of AfD voters consider their personal financial situation to be good, and while they are slightly less economically satisfied than people voting for other parties, the differences are so minor as to be basically irrelevant:

LemonDrizzle fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Mar 14, 2016

# ¿ Mar 14, 2016 08:31

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

I don't see how you can look at a chart showing that concerns about refugees were by far the most important factor cited by AfD voters to explain their choice and then conclude that their decision was motivated by concerns about poverty rather than immigration. Concerns about social justice are not a "close" second there.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2016 12:19

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Tesseraction posted:

Eh, I'm not particularly worried yet, the BNP got very popular for a while in Britain but the scrutiny of a few electoral gains (at lower legislative levels) led to them going into decline. The sentiment won't go away, though, so that's a worry.

AfD is pretty much the German version of UKIP; the German BNP equivalent is the NPD. AfD are also unlikely to just fade away unless the refugee crisis is resolved satisfactorily over this year; since German federal elections have a system of proportional representation, AfD will almost certainly be represented in the Bundestag.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 00:47

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/710495565348540417
AfD pulling two thirds of the SPD's vote share nationally.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 17:50

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/euronews/status/710830625486458881

# ¿ Mar 18, 2016 15:21

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/elenacmontanez/status/710853295657652225

Having done that, they will be required to cut down the mightiest tree in the forest.... with a herring!

# ¿ Mar 18, 2016 16:43

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/martinmichelot/status/712193673526644736

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 09:37

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Which is more likely to deter Russian aggression against Finland: a few hundred thousand guys with rifles, or the fact that the EU has a mutual defence clause which means that attacking Finland (or any other member state) is tantamount to attacking Britain and France, and any scenario in which those two are gearing up to fight Russia almost certainly has the US coming in on their side as well?

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 23:50

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

what the actual gently caress Sweden what are you doing how could you possibly have thought that was a good idea

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/sweden-cuts-maximum-mortgage-term-to-105-years-the-average-is-14/

quote:

hink there's a housing affordability crisis in Britain, with low mortgage rates likely to drive house prices even higher?
Take a look at Sweden where lending policies have been more generous, and where house price inflation has been (at least recently) more extreme.
A number of banks and analysts have warned that Sweden's housing market is overheating, with HSBC in January saying: "The pace of acceleration in the housing market points to a bubble."

House prices across the country were up 18pc last year.
Now Sweden is dealing with its overheated housing market by reining in mortgage availability.
Regulators introduced restrictions which will mean mortgage terms - the time homebuyers have to clear the debt - will be drastically reduced to just... 105 years.
The move comes because historically there has been no time limit on mortgage duration.
So as prices rose and affordability became tougher, Swedish banks' response was to extend terms, as had been the case in other high-cost property markets including Japan in the Eighties.
The average term is reported to be 140 years. This meant many people who inherited property but who could not afford to take on the mortgage debt had to sell up.

No, HSBC, it is not the "pace of acceleration" that points to the existence of a bubble, it is the fact that you have normalized taking out a mortgage that is longer than a human lifespan.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 09:25

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

punakone posted:

https://www.all4shooters.com/en/mobile/Shooting/law/EU-Gun-Ban-French-Ministry-Internal-Affairs-responsibility/

Not surprising but nice hypocricy from the French government.

I'm probably going to regret this, but are these the changes you're so upset about?

http://basc.org.uk/blog/press-releases/latest-news/qa-european-commission-proposals-for-amending-the-firearms-directive/

quote:

What is the EU Commission proposing for firearms?
The Commission is proposing a number of changes to the EU Firearms Directive (91/477/EEC) following recent terrorist atrocities. Proposals include the following:
Introduction of a five year ceiling to certificate life.
Introduction of a �standard medical test� for applicants.
Bringing �collectors� and �sound moderators� within the scope of the directive.
Regulating blank firing and other replicas.
Banning the ownership of EU category A firearms (such as machine guns) even when deactivated.
Introduction of �competence checks� for firearms dealers and brokers in addition to safety/criminal checks.
Tightening of the distance sales for firearms dealers.
A proposed ban on �semi-automatic firearms for civilian use which resemble weapons with automatic mechanisms�.
Introducing stricter specifications on deactivated firearms.
Introduction of stricter marking and tracing rules.

If so, how on earth do any of those regulations impede your ability to form a militia and play Red Dawn: Mosquito Swamp Edition with the Russians? None of them relate to the functioning of the weapon, and the only one that would affect existing owners is the "no scary black rifles" rule (which, admittedly, is dumb).

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 18:55

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

punakone posted:

The original scope of the directive which I outlined earlier in the thread is perfect. It did everything to curb current illegal firearms. My main disagreement with its current form is the ban of all semi automatics and the way this directive would criminalize collectors, who already have To have a license to be a collector, then have separate licenses to the guns themselves.

There's no proposal to ban all semi-automatics:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-6111_en.htm

quote:

What changes to the Firearms Directive is the Commission proposing today?
Stricter rules to ban certain semi-automatic firearms, which move from Category B to Category A and will not, under any circumstances, be allowed to be held by private persons, even if they have been permanently deactivated

The British shooting associations believe it only applies to weapons that "resemble" automatics.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 20:14

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

GaussianCopula posted:

How does banning weapons that look like automatic weapon prevent terrorist attacks from happening? I don't have the impression that terrorists would prefer a weapon just because it looks like a M16 but rather that their main criteria is "does this weapon allow me to kill as many humans as possible"

I agree with you; the proposal to ban weapons on the basis of whether or not they look scary as opposed to any functional criterion is silly. I'm not trying to defend the proposed changes, just explaining what they are.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 20:56

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

GaussianCopula posted:

I don't think the academic work behind softly deflating a bubble is enough to win a Noble, given that most/all of it already exists. The main problem is to actually implement such a policy because it means that you are effectively cutting the profits of a whole lot of people, who will not be pleased by that idea and who are often better organized than the people who would benefit from the results of your work. I guess an instrument to combat this phenomenon would be to allow the people already owning real estate to directly share in the profits of newly zoned land, but the social implication of letting supposedly rich homeowners profit from further development will probably lead to massive protest, even though such an instrument would increase the value for everyone. You could call it reverse public domain to have a catchy name for it.

Social housing on the other hand does nothing to slow the bubble down but might even accelerate it by reducing the availability of regular housing without a corresponding reduction in demand.

Why do you believe that building social housing would not reduce demand? Each new unit of social housing removes one renting household from the private market, making it less attractive for would-be landlords to invest.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2016 11:07

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Tigey posted:

Now, it is not a violation of Greek sovereignty to negotiate various conditions as a prerequisite for further support/bailouts, with the alternative being Grexit. However, it is a violation of Greek sovereignty to interfere in internal decision making processes, such as specifying the exact nature of those cuts, penetrating decision making processes by emplacing officials within institutions, dictating Greek economic policy, etc.

This seems like a bizarre position to me - you're apparently saying that conditionality is OK as long as it's vague; it's fine for the EU to say "you must run a surplus" or even "you must run a surplus of 1.5%", but not "you must run a surplus of 1.5% and you must achieve it in part by reforming your pension system." Why?

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 20:11

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

https://twitter.com/LondonerVince/status/718123002110615553

Things like this kind of make me appreciate good old FPTP voting.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 18:13

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Original source not linked, but, uh... wow:

https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/719789263563419648

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 09:56

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Tesseraction posted:

I admit that I'm not exactly reading regular reports of French politics but he does seem to have primarily done gently caress-all in his time in office. Similar to Cameron here in the UK.

This isn't to say the governments they run aren't loving things up royally (see: austerity UK, French labour laws) but both of them just seem to be sitting in their Big Boss Chair with their feet up content that they're in the history books and nothing else need be done.

Huh? Cameron's fought and won one major referendum that would've changed the status of the country, and is preparing to contest another, he's overseen a major top-down reorganisation of the health service and is planning one of the school system, and he's running a government that's cutting public spending by ~9% of GDP, radically shrinking the state. There are many things you can accuse him of, but quietly sitting back and doing nothing isn't really one of them.

Also, lol: http://openeurope.org.uk/daily-shakeup/tuc-warns-holiday-entitlements-risk-brexit-50-healthcare-workers-argue-leaving-benefit-nhs/

quote:

An Insa poll for Bild puts the centre-left SPD, Chancellor Angela Merkel�s coalition partners, at below 20% for the first time at 19.5% (-0.5). Merkel�s CDU/CSU is on 31.5% (-0.5); the Greens are on 13.5% (+1.0), the AfD on 12.5% (0.5); Die Linke on 9.5%(+0.5) and the FDP remains on 7.5%.

The German grand coalition is on the verge of losing its majority.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 11:17

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Here we go again, round 2 in a series of ?????: http://www.wsj.com/articles/greek-government-to-submit-pension-income-tax-legislation-next-week-1460483618

quote:

ATHENS�Greece�s government plans to submit legislation to Parliament on pension reform and income taxation next week, the Greek Finance Minister said Tuesday, hours after the Greek delegation and its creditors paused negotiations without reaching an agreement over the country�s bailout review.

�As a sovereign country we maintain the right to decide how we are going to reach the targets� set by the country�s bailout agreement, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos told reporters.

Mr. Tsakalotos said the bills are expected to be voted on by the end of April, after taking into consideration the creditors demands. When asked whether this will be considered as unilateral action by creditors, the Greek Finance Minister said that Greece wants to be ready when an agreement is reached and avoid anything that may delay the disbursement.

However, he added he isn't willing to submit legislation to further lower the minimum taxable income level. Labor Minister George Katrougalos said Greece cannot move ahead with cuts not included in the bill and that the current legislation more than covers the targets set by creditors.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 19:56

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

blowfish posted:

1) We lack a nuclear-experienced construction workforce. Ideally there'd be one new reactor in build somewhere in the EU every year, so that one or a few contractors (or ideally state firms) have the opportunity to become not poo poo at building nuclear. Instead, we get a decades long gap where everyone competent retires and the nuclear operators coast along on their existing reactor fleet until all the nuclear reactors are past their design lifespan and about to get shut down. Then there's a frantic rush to build something, anything nuclear (see: UK, see in 15-20 years: France) leading to a bunch of lovely contractors building a ton of reactors at the same time and staying poo poo.

This was brought up in the UKMT, but it isn't really true for either Britain or France unless you ignore both countries' experience with building small scale military reactors. Obviously, that expertise and manufacturing capacity won't necessarily translate to building large EPR-type plants, but it would translate well into designing and building smaller modular designs that could be (comparatively) quickly iterated on and refined. If you're going to have teething troubles with the first few builds, it's far better to have them on a diddy little 200 MW design costing a few hundred million a pop than a 2 GW behemoth costing several billion.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2016 17:17

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

The government of Luxembourg has taken note of the LuxLeaks documents and is acting to ensure that the villains who stained the country's good name will be suitably punished: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/24/luxleaks-antoine-deltour-luxembourg-tax-avoidance-pricewaterhousecoopers-trial

quote:

Two former employees of PricewaterhouseCoopers accused of being behind the biggest ever leak of confidential corporate tax deals face criminal trial in Luxembourg on Tuesday.
Antoine Deltour and a second man, who is expected to be named in court this week, are charged with carrying out the LuxLeaks theft, violating the Grand Duchy�s strict professional secrecy laws and other offences. Their criminal prosecution follows a complaint to Luxembourg�s public prosecutor by PwC.
The LuxLeaks scandal, which transformed the debate on international tax reform, exposed how Luxembourg had for years been secretly sanctioning, on an industrial scale, aggressive cross-border tax avoidance by some of the world�s largest businesses.
Last month, Deltour told his supporters that together they were helping �the fight against unfair tax practices�. However, he added, �those who revealed these practices face jail and a fine that exceeds a lifelong income�.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2016 07:43

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Pluskut Tukker posted:

This worked like a charm in the Dutch referendum on the European Constitution in 2005, it will probably do its magic now...

After the bomb that Obama dropped ("no, you're not getting a hurried special snowflake trade deal with the US if you leave") and Michael Gove saying that there's no danger in leaving because we could be just like Albania, Ukraine, Serbia, and Bosnia, no amount of magic is going to save the Leave campaign.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2016 15:37

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:58

LemonDrizzle: Mar 28, 2012; neoliberal shithead

Plucky Brit posted:

That sounds hilarious. Source?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...n-a6995826.html

quote:

Boris Johnson has criticised the US president Barack Obama and suggested his attitude to Britain might be based on his �part-Kenyan� heritage and �ancestral dislike of the British empire�.
Writing a column for The Sun newspaper the outgoing Mayor of London recounted a story about a bust of Winston Churchill purportedly being removed from White House.
�Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President�s ancestral dislike of the British empire � of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender,� he wrote.
The White House said in 2012 that the story of the bust being moved was �100 per cent false� and that the bust remained in the White House, having been moved to the President's private residence.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2016 17:04

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > EU Politics: I miss Renaults(don't make fun of me)

«‹›9 »