Even if they did, I am sure this would have been toppled by our constitutional court. You have to know that our police is not allowed to scan number plates of cars entering or leaving the country due to privacy concerns. How on earth would anyone think that lifting our dearly held fundamental right of "mail privacy" is ok?

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freehorse 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

If this was becoming an EU regulation, constitutional courts can decide to overrun constitution to uphold it (as has happened in the past plenty).

What this implies for the democratic values eu is supposed to represent is an interesting discussion.

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doikor 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

This isn’t how EU regulation/directives work as they are not laws.

Only way this can come into force in a member country is that country making their own law implementing it. It is at that point that constitutionality should be checked and the law stopped from being implemented.

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freehorse 3 days ago | parent [-]

In the case it is declared unconstitutional, there are two options: take the fight to the eu/amend the law, or change the constitution. The latter is more probable than the former in the political climate of our times. So we are talking at best for some delay in implementing it.

	▲	doikor 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Or just never approve it and ignore any demands eu makes about it. Just take a look at Orban with Hungary how many years you can keep doing this without anything actually happening. EU in general works only to the extent that member nations want it to work and finding a concensus is always the first goal and split decisions are heavily discouraged (and pretty much anything that matters needs a supermajority at minimum). If one of the member nations just goes "ah fuck it I don't like this" EU really does not have many tools to fight it (especially for things that effect internal things in the country not trade between them). This is also why directives like this are very unlikely to ever go through without unanimous support from the council (heads of state of the member nations) I mean literally at worst EU could keep some of the benefits away from a country over not implemeting some directive (what EU is finally after years thinking about doing to Hungary) but that does not really work with a country like Germany that pays more then it gets as they could just go "fuck it we are not paying our dues then". Basically unlike in the US where the federal government has police, army, etc to actually enforce its rulings EU has none of those. All it can really do is try to take money away which again does not really work all that well.

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izacus 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The claim that this can "overrun constitution" has not been true at all which we've seen in examples of other directives.

	▲	freehorse 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		These are not simple questions, especially for people who have not studied law, but constitutional courts have decided in the past to either disregard or not such conflicts. Even if they don't, this may just result to the constitution been amended after some years by the parliament in order to comply to eu law. There is precedence of eu primacy and I do not see anything that can guarantee that a constitutional court will actually rule this way or the other here.

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ManBeardPc 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It would probably be toppled by courts, yes. Anyway, meanwhile they already start implementing it, developing the technology and infrastructure they can base on the next time where they basically reintroduce the same illegal laws in a new name. So companies and governments already have to spent huge sums of resources to introduce it and may fall into the sunken-cost fallacy. "If we now already have it we can also use it (for something else)"?

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uyzstvqs 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Even if it's EU regulation? My experience is that you get told that EU regulation and international treaties are "above our national democratic/justice system", and that we can't do anything about it.

	▲	nickslaughter02 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's how it works. > Primacy of European Union law > European law has priority over any contravening national law, including the constitution of a member state itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law
	▲	klinch 3 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		IANAL - but when EU regulation and national law regarding civil rights conflict then the citizen has the "union set" of all guaranteed rights. Or in other words: A member state can grant additional civil rights (on top of the EU charta) but can't take them away.
	▲	3np 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Germany specifically seems to have an out if it comes down to it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_la...