ca.funke wrote:I am seriously shocked of the attitude of some people in here.
I do not support 2004/38/EC the way it is laid out right now, if I was the "king of the EU" I would implement major changes. But that aside, the directive is binding law at present, and governments arbitrarily ignore the law.
Not only is there no outcry, the ignorance of the law is even protected and justified
Of course the law can and should be criticised and subsequently amended through a democratic process, but that doesn't change that at present it is valid as it is, making any breach an illegal act and if this is done knowingly and deliberately that's even worse.
I somehow remain hoping that there is a general consensus that laws in general should be obeyed...
I agree with you as far as it goes. Further, I think it is very bad indeed that individual people are adversely affected and put in a state of stress and uncertainty as a result of all of this disorder and lack of clarity.
But — and I'm not defending law-breaking by governments when I say this — this is a good example of the sort of mess that the EU project is liable to find itself in more and more if the EU tries to implement things over the heads of governments, particularly if (as in this case) the things they try to implement are partly unworkable. There seems to me to be a growing democratic deficit at the heart of the EU, whereby decisions are taken with very little consultation with the people of the EU, and enormous pressure is put on countries to "sign up" or agree.
What other democratic organisation, for example, would even think of trying to tell a people who had voted "no" in a referendum that they got it wrong and therefore need to vote again. I know that's not the official line, but it seems to be a loud message. It's an unwise message too, since it is likely to have the opposite effect, should there be another vote, from that which is intended. I am not in Ireland, so I don't pretend to know the real reasons why people voted against the Lisbon treaty in the numbers that they did: probably no one really does, I guess. I do strongly suspect that if other governments had been brave enough to (or had had to) have a referendum on the treaty it would have been rejected by more than just one country. But that's not really the point: you can't just tell people all the time, "It's got to be this way because that's what's good for Europe."
Well, in fact, you can tell them that, but if you keep doing it, the whole thing will surely fall apart eventually. In the case of the subject of this thread, for whatever reason, several countries have decided that they want to retain, or regain, more control over who can live within their borders. Because there seems to be a lack of any sensible way of discussing this (can't have that — it's not "European"; the EU has decided...; etc), a stalemate is being approached. I'm not commenting on whether these countries are right or wrong to want to regain this control, but clearly that is what they want. (And I don't suppose that these countries want to prevent the entry to live of all family members of EU citizens... I think we sometimes assume that this is the case, but I don't think it is.)
As I say, there seems to me to be a democratic deficit somewhere at the heart of the EU. This worries me, because if this problem is not resolved, I see only two outcomes: the unravelling of the EU as we know it, or a gradual diminution in the democratic credentials of the member states. The first would be messy and protracted, the second disastrous. My own view is that the EU itself would do well to recognise this problem and act to resolve it, before it finds that the problem is "resolved" for it. I have no doubt that the most likely outcome of this present débacle will be some sort of stitch-up, which will enable everyone to limp along again for a while, but a cloth can take only so many stitch-ups before it finally tears.
In the mean time, it is individual people who suffer, as we know from reading the stories on these boards if in no other way. I reiterate that I am not defending law-breaking on the part of governments, but this whole situation worries me very much: the EU
and the national governments are failing their citizens (and the family members of their citizens) in my view (even though I am sure it is in an unfashionable view).