@Respenus

Fair enough. You have a point there.
I'm just getting so tired of this whole EU thing.:nope:

Respenus in so far is correct that in case of this court a bit more differentiated view may be adequate. However there are some reasons that explain my anger:

the court is associated with the European human rights convention that sees some very serious and disturbing ideological implications being turned into active policies that make me extremely critical and hostile to this convention. I do not see it as being predominantly positive and/or reasonable, and I reject it, therefore. I also claim it is abused for pushing forward a certain, often criticised political agenda in europe.

I have just checked the website of the court (in German), that, amongst other things, lists a selection of past cases and the according rulings by the court. I did not check it systemtically, just enough to get a quick overview. I cannot say that I agree with the vast majority of sentences/ruling.

I also have a principal problem with the european courts in general, though more with the European high court than with the Human Rights Court. That is that the judges serving there, by the mere system of selecting them (through national goivenrment's leaders decision, royal payments and only short serving times) get lured with a strong incentive to find theior ruling in accordance with offically wanted europolotical ambitions, agendas, projects, desires. Though even more with the High Court than the Human Rights Court ou will find only rare examples were the court dared to seriously challenge offical Eu polciies and positions. Doing so runs the risk for the judges that they will not be reconfirmed in office by political leaders, making them loosing their royal incomes. This system in itself has very serious legitimation problems, and that results in questionable independence of the court(s).

Rehgarding the sicherheitsverwahrung in Germany, the rules for it have been tightened several times in past years. Certain sexual deviations as well as violent crminals simply are beyoind the reach of therapy and resocialisation. In thse worst cases, the interests of soceity overrule their interest to be freed after some time. In Germany, life sentence means maximum 24 years, usually they get released after 15 years. It is inhumane and a crime against potential future victims to set free certain people when meanwhile experts assessed the candidate and come to the conclusion that the likelihood for them committing rape again is extremely high.

what will the ruling by the ocurt now chnage bin Germany? Around 200 highly dangerous criminals who all got sentenced to Sicherheitsverwahrung becausue their social prognosis says the probability they rape again or comit seriosu crimes again ist extremely high, will be let loose on the German public. Possbily, where they get identified, massive 24/7 police operations will be needed to protect and safeguard them around the clock, which is both very expensive and personell-intensive. and a good share of these guys will commit ne crimes. Explain that to their victims, Respenus, why you wanted these felons being given the opportunity to rape and to hurt them. the liekly reslt in chnaged legal basis in Germany will be that courts will order Sicherheitsverwahrung more often in advance, because they are not allowed to order it after some years have passed and the offender has been re-examined by experts.

Sexual deviations that make deviant people even obsessive crminals (rapists), often have their root in young age, and many of them are not available for being changed or neutralised by psychotherapy. established structures in your sexual behavior structure are extremely difficult or impossible to be changed once they have formed up. If that makes the individual in question a danger and threat to tohers, you either must use chemical chains (drugs) to supress certain drives with brute force), which has its own set of sideeffects and must be enforced under cointrolled, supervised conditions (which again has been brandmarked as a crime against humanity by critics of this chemical intervention), or you have to lock the indiovidual away for as long as it stays the way it is - and that is probably for the rest of it's life, at least until very high age. In sexual deviations, resocialising goals often are no option at all. Pedophilia for example cannot be cured, nor can you cure a psychopathic or sociopathic mind structure. Often, the deviaion is hardwired into the brain's neurons, or the brain's/body's chemistry. Therefore, protection of others must be the priority. the interest of the many very clearly overrule the interest of the one, in this case.

BTW, in past months I remeber that we have heard news on repeated cases of sex offenders having been released from prison - and immediately starting to rape again. The discussion of this possibility thus is not just a thing of abstract theory. It is a scenario showing a very high probability - evem more so since long time prisoners have orientation problems when they get relased into a world that has changed very much, and the risk of falling back into old criminal habits in general is very high with our current prison system.

In general i thionk we pay too much atgention for crminals, terrorists, perpetrators, and not enough attention for past and future victims. Even in the media you see it: we alwayxs discuss the crimoinal's fate and history, turning them into heroes and anti-.heroes constantly, we even form movie starring RAF terrorists as if they were modern Robin Hoods.

But how many TV discussioins, how many evening movie you see focussing on the victims? The ratio between both is badly out of sync, and we should be ashamed about this.

I don't have a problem with socialists, I'm a socialist myself:O:
I DO have a problem with the EU overruling local governments, we should decide for ourselves what we want.
If I vote for party X, it's because I agree with party X's points. The Dutch election system is rather well organised (no electors and stuff), so the eventual government will always be a reasonably good representation of the Dutch people. Now if our government passes a law, we don't need the EU telling us we can't.
By doing so, the EU will eventually merge into a super-state, with the people having not much control over the government anymore (as in the US, where there are only 2 major parties)

It'S even worse. Proposals made by the EU commission are legally binding, they are mandatory, which means national parliaments have no right to not agree to them and to not waving them through. It even goes one step further. A government that sees itself unable to bring something through the parliament because the opposition there is too strong, can take it and bring it to the commission and aks it to do somethign about it. The commission (mind you: it does not get elected and legitimised by european people) then turns it into a commission proposals, et voilá - the parliamentary opposition immediately has become powerless and must wave through a proposals that before it opposed when it still was governmental policy.

Mind you also that the lisbin dicate rules that the commission can also evade lockups by an opposing EU parliemant by declaring a state of emergency, and then ruling via emergancy decress with a union-wide validity. several states have bitterly opposed and prevented any attempt to define what such an emergancy could be, when, how and by what such an emergancy automatism could be triggered, what the exit conditions should look like, and that there even must be an exit condition! nothing speaks aginst the commission decalring a state of emergency, and letting it run without time limit, ruling by decrees and without needing to fear any legal opposition by the EU parliament.

Why are you even voting anymore...? ;)

That is the intention. Not freedom or democracy, but control. the way the EU constitution and the dictate of Lisbon was handled and enforced, tells the story of a de facto coup d'ètat.

Please Sky, do search and quote for me the fabled parts of the Treaty on the EU and the Treaty on the functioning of the EU as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon, which speak of such prerogatives. I must say, I've had a professor for EU law with the same view as you have and even he "failed" to mention such a clause. Admittedly, I do not know the whole of the treaty by heart, so I could not remember it, but it does come of as strikingly odd, that the UK, Ireland, Poland or the Czech Republic would allow such a thing to enter and then ratify it.

well luckily the dutch Socialist Party is against the EU as well:yeah:

Not odd at all. The treaty'S main text is only 1-2 dozen pages (depending on fomatting, obviously), but the appendices have 600+ pages. Also, after the failing vote by the dutch and French, before the constitution became the treaty of Lisbon, the content additionally got shuffled and mixed again, to make it even more impossible to fully overwatch all and every statement in it, not to mention the implications of these statements.

You are absoluetyl right, most polticians in national parliament have not known in full what they were voting upon, and there also was a high ammpount of anonymous group pressure everywhere. In Germany, severla poltiicans hinted that they readily admit tonot fully understand the treaty.

It never was menat to be fully understood by members of parliament, what else have you thought? It is a scheme only for legal experts and bureaucrats, a scheme diverse and complex enough so that you need the elite of the "interpreters" to use it (securing their power that way), and being able to hide all that critical content that is reducing freedom and sovereignity of nations and national parliaments in it'S compelxity.

I have adressed this problem repeately in the past 2 or 3 years, Respenus. ;) The treaty itself means not much - the appendices are the critical thing. I also referred to critics who are far more competent in evaluating the whole thing, in this context I repeatedly quoted the criticsm by former German federal president Roman Herzog, who before he became federal president of Germany was heading the German Constitutional high Court as it's president. He is a high-rpfiled expert on the constitution as well. And repeatdly I saw him on TV and read him on magazines ripping key components of it apart, illustrating the dangerous implications of unsolved contradictions and undefined details that ndeed would need precise specifications.

I am as unable as you are to fully overview that 600+ pages of appendices. It becomes even more critical since becasue the thing does not exist in one legally binding langauge only that is binding for all, but in several different languages. You may imagine my surprise when some weeks ago I compared part of the Maastrict treaty text in english and german - and found translation differences in some cases that made the according paragraphs no longer sdaying the same thing in both versions. This must be the reason why that dutch critic with his guest comment in a German paper whom I mentioned earlier, back then suggested that they should fix the constitution in just one language as a legally binding fundament: in Latin. :) Roman Herzog too has indicated that there are translation variations of a gravity that they could cause possible legal problems.

The complexity is intentional, Respenus. It is all about mimicry. There is probably only a handful of people who understand the Lisbon dicate text in full and in all detail and impliation. And that complexity, I say again, is intentional. It makes it more difficult to challange and to oppose it in parts. It distracts and discourages. The constition, and the Lisbon text, Valery Giscard d'Estaing - amongst others - has confirmed very clearly, do not vary in content. The changes made are cosmetic only. but they put quite an effort into shuffling it and making it more complex and unstructured so that critics find it more difficult to point at something.

It is not the treaty text. It is the appendices where the real important stuff got messed up.

What he means Respenus is he is repeatedly challenged about the bits where he makes up stuff about what the treaty says, and he addresses it by either saying its a secret part that no one knows about or that you have to read between the lines of the treaty and write your own interpretation of what you think you want the treaty to really say.

The appendices are only the original treaties as they are amended by the text of the lisbon treaty. So there are no alterations in the appendices that are not detailed in the treaty itself.

That being said, the treaty is crap.

Don't worry guys if Merkel's proposals concerning the eurozone are accepted there wont any functioning member left! It will be a cemetery with a German vicar, a Dutch undertaker, a French widow and a British beggar outside the entrance mumbling "I told you so". No need to tell you who will be in the graves ehh.......



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So you guys no like EU and the decision by the European Court of Human Rights?

That is interesting and all but let me point out to you that you are drawing conclusions that are based on wrong assumptions.

Why is that so?

It is because you are confusing the European Court of Human Rights with the European Court of Justice.

You see, the court ruling you do not like was held by the European Court of Human Rights.
This court, which is located in Strassbourg in France, is no EU institution (What does this all have to do with the EU?). It was established under the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950 (!). The convention is adopted by the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe is distinct from the EU (which has 27 member states) and consists of 47 member states , such as Russia, Ukraine and Turkey. Russia e.g. is not a member of the EU, is not it?

Btw. Canada, Japan, Mexico, the USA and the Holy See have observer status with the Council of Europe.

Some EU member states are members of the Council of Europe but not all members of the Council of Europe are EU members.

The Court of Justice which is located in Luxembourg City in Luxembourg on the other hand is an EU institution.

Does the European Court of Justice deal with Criminal law?

No, because Criminal law belongs to the national law systems and not to the EU law system, simple as that. There is no EU criminal law:


So you could do all you want, leave the EU, arrest the EU representatives and the EU court's judges and even shoot them, this is pointless.

You would still facing the possibility that the European Court of Human Rights makes decisions that are binding because your country is a member of the Council of Europe and signed the European Charta of Human Rights.

You would have to leave the Council of Europe instead which again is no EU institution.
Well, there is an EU institution that is called “European Council” but that is something else.

It is confusing, is not it?

I work next door to the CoJ, shall drop by tomorrow and find out what's what :P

Dan D,
we are in a euro, EU, Europe bashing and "leave us alone" mode right now. Moderation will be sought afterwards ...

But,
always good to put things in perspective.
(or at least try to).


.

Personaly, I have no desire to see the EU reformed.

However, I do have a strong desire to see the EU, and all the other organizations that threaten national sovereignty, abolished.

I didn't mean to point you our Snestorm, but your argument gave me a chance to respond.

I'd like to see all nation-states or any organisations which promote the idea of the sovereignty of the state abolished and replaced with the sovereignty of the people, something which current states are lacking.

@ Tribesman
Sky is not wrong in pointing out strange and frankly, odd parts of the EU primary law. There are some unknowns and the Lisbon Treaty ensures that it is even harder to read than before. There were also certain elements before the Lisbon treaty which would open up the way to increase community competence, yet it requires the complete support of all member states.

It would clarify a lot of things Sky, if you could maybe post at least an article pointing out the more legal aspects of your arguments. I for one would like to read them just before I study the bloody thing and the more you know...

My sincere condolences to you! :O:

But isn't that the essence of socialism? The individual or group subordinating itself for the greater good? What you're saying here doesn't sound very socialistic.

I don't believe that having more parties automatically increases the peoples control over government, but we have different political systems anyways so what may work for you may not work for us.