I have such a strong reaction to news like this, it's hard for me to not think that it's appropriate for every member state to consider leaving the EU now. They've succeeded in shifting me to a very anti-EU stance in one proposed measure - brilliant! It wouldn't surprise me if the leaders of most states are quite keen on such surveillance though.
I kinda get it, but it doesn't make sense to blame it on the EU when you own government would likely impose the exact same (if not harsher) rules. Thats at least what I tell myself. I'm under no illusion that my own government is any better.
I think it does logically - in any countries where you have more direct democracy than the EU flavour, certainly easily achievable in respect of the Commission.
Whether that has any practical difference given the nature of politicians and politics in general, well, at best your mileage may vary.
EU is not a foreign entity, it's made up of the governments of the members(some elected some appointed by the locally elected). So when you leave EU, you end up to live with the entity that tried to introduce it in first place.
If they didn't wanted that, they could have blocked it. However, leaving EU might actually help the government to have a better localised excuse. For example, maybe child abuse is not a big thing in your country but immigration is a hot topic? Then you can have "break the encryption to stop the human smugglers" campaign.
In France, there's an election for each. One for national parliament seats, one for EU parliament seats.
In the last decade, the national elections were usually won by center-left (Macron's party) while the EU ones were won by the far-right (Le Pen even has a seat at the EU parliament AFAIK)
Well in theory I'd agree with you, but in practice your assertion that people would vote the same party nationally and at the EU level is demonstrably false
I don't get it? Do you claim that one of the elections is rigged? I mean, we have multiple elections for a reason right? People choose to vote for different people on different elections, why would that be problematic and how that would be "fixed" if France left EU?
I'm very critical of the EU, i do think it is poorly designed and not a desirable project regardless.
That being said, things like this would happen at the national level for sure, the EU has nothing to do with it. It's systemic to "modern democracies ".
The counter-argument is that nothing prevents governments coordinating on this in a supranational manner, anyway (cf. the planned, but fortunately rejected ACTA).
In the EU enforcement is mostly decentralised, anyway.
