Vincent

@Vincent@feddit.nl

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Vincent ,

Why does Deutsche Welle use the American date notation?

Vincent ,

He's the only member, but there are more MPs. But Wilders has strong control over the party indeed.

Vincent ,

That is a classic. Personally, for the Netherlands, I was thinking some Doe Maar.

Or possibly Little Green Bag, but I'm guessing that doesn't fit the "relatively unknown outside the Netherlands" criterion, nor is it in Dutch.

Do any credit reporting agencies in Europe give consumers control over creditors access? Englisch

In the US, consumers can freeze their credit worthiness records and receive a code. When the records are frozen, the only orgs that can access the records are those already doing business with the consumer. If a consumer wants to open up a new account, they share the code with the prospective creditor who uses it to see the...

Vincent ,

There's definitely the bureau kredietregistratie in the Netherlands.

As far as I know you can't "freeze" it like you describe, though you can request information on what is stored about you and who accessed it. It also costs money to run a check, and credit history doesn't go back more than five years, doesn't include your mortgage unless you missed paying that for longer than three months, and doesn't include debts less than €250.

Edit: also just checked, but the information is only shared with parties that share credit history with the BKR. I think that means that it's basically frozen by default, i.e. only parties that are actually about to do business with you can access it, but I'm not entirely sure. They'll at least have to do some kind of business, i.e. not be a generic data broker.

Vincent ,

That's some fine future Dutch soil you got there.

Vincent ,

Their main point is that they want to enable true pan-European parties 😅

"So will your party join The Left or The Greens in the European Parliament?" "Yes." ( sh.itjust.works ) Englisch

So Sumar's (Spanish party) politicians will apparently be distributed across both The Left and the Greens European parties. Presumably an image maneuver, since joining an European party usually doesn't bind your vote, and Spanish green parties usually get integrated in leftist electoral options anyway.

Vincent ,

In the Netherlands, the parties PvdA and GroenLinks have started working together very closely, participating in elections with combined lists. They did the same for the EP elections, but had the challenge that PvdA was part of S&D, whereas GroenLinks was part of the Greens.

They went for the same solution: half the list (the PvdA part) will join S&D, and half (the GroenLinks part) will join the Greens. They will align their votes, though.

The way I interpret that, is that it'll be easier to influence the Greens (since it's a smaller group and thus GroenLinks is a larger part of it), but if the S&D position can be swayed, it'll have more effect. And in general, both parties presumably aren't that far from their group's stances anyway.

Vincent ,

Yeah, which seems a bit of a hassle, given that there's only two possible opinions one could have on any given matter. Don't know why they bother with more than two parties, really.

Vincent ,

The Netherlands has Stemwijzer and Kieskompas. Of course, we already voted on Wednesday.

Vincent ,

Polls predicted both to be at around 8 seats. Exit polls have PVV at 7, Labour-Greens at 8, with a margin of error of 1. So pretty much what was expected.

Whether one or the other is larger is mostly irrelevant, as that only pertains to the Dutch share of seats in the European Parliament - there are way more seats to be assigned, and there will not be an absolute majority for anyone anyway.

Vincent ,

I think usually something like that is intended to as a counterweight, to prevent power from centralising.

However, to prevent the scales from tipping too badly, a sufficient majority in parliament can override the veto, and I believe the party that's pushing this (Georgian Dream) has enough seats to be able to do this.

(Caveat: I'm not Georgian, so this is just based on somewhat above average interest in politics and in the country, following my local news.)

Vincent ,

There's a lot in there that'll be hard to achieve (my analysis in Dutch), a bunch of things that were mostly expected and aren't great, and of course a couple of good things too.

Especially considering that the party leaders won't be part of the government, I wonder how long it's going to last. It'll be hard for them to meet the party leaders' demands, and there are also bound to be things that aren't specified in the deal that'll cause friction.

Vincent ,

But Fico is from that party, no? Attacking journalists and what not isn't good, but neither is shooting a politician. Especially if you're supposedly on the side that wants to protect democracy.

Vincent ,

Be careful reaching for the explanation that best matches your preconceived notions though. There are plenty of normal enemies too, and unfortunately, just one of them needs to be crazy enough to do this.

Vincent ,

Even if he did not have support of a big part of the population, the point of democracy is to be able to get rid of them without violence.

Vincent ,

Absolutely, which is why as democracy-loving citizens (which honestly everyone should be), people should strongly protest anything that damages it - in a democratic way, as long as that's possible. And I don't think Slovakia has regressed so badly yet that there are no democratic avenues of resistance anymore.

Vincent ,

I don't get the irony? EU doesn't want European companies to fall over if they're able to produce solar panels at a similar price point and quality as their Chinese competitors, so it blocks foreign subsidies that might have that effect. Seems perfectly consistent to me?

Vincent ,

Seriously. Just the distinction between "vows to" and "reserves the right to" is already needlessly incendiary.

Vincent ,

The EU interfering directly with domestic politics of member states by for example banning political parties would, safe to say, not be well received.

There's so much you can do below the level of banning political parties though. For example, centralisation of control over media organisations could be combated, local governments could be prevented from interfering with the independence of the judiciary, anti-surveillance measures as you mentioned, etc.

There's definitely the possibility to overstep, but I don't think the line between that and taking literally any action at all is as thin as you mention.

Vincent ,

For sure, but even then the EU needs to go through the democratic process it has in place.

Oh absolutely, I don't think anyone's arguing for sending an army to Hungary or something.

The question is indeed how much can practically be done. However, it's not like Hungary can unilaterally veto everything without consequences - they (or Fidesz specifically, I suppose) still have their own list of things they want to get done, and thus there's room for negotiation.

Vincent ,

At some point you reach critical mass, where the majority of the population uses the bicycle as at least one of their modes of transportation, after which improvements to bicycle infrastructure are more widely supported and thus more easily made - which then causes more people to use the bicycle, etc.

That's what happened in the Netherlands a couple of decades ago, and the infrastructure now is wonderful and still getting better.

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