<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>Al-Khwarizmi</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not anti-EU, on the contrary, but honestly the claim is true in practice. I&amp;#x27;m not going to give you any hard data, but I think it&amp;#x27;s just obvious in plain sight.&lt;p&gt;At least in my country, almost all the debate in news outlets is about national or local issues. EU regulations do come up, but they are always depicted as something that comes &amp;quot;from above&amp;quot; and not tied to specific parties or people. If there is controversy about a national law, the media will blame things on the government or on the opposition (depending on their bias). If there is controversy about an European law, the media will blame an abstract &amp;quot;Brussels&amp;quot;... or directly the government or the opposition anyway, as they&amp;#x27;re the ones who implement it.&lt;p&gt;In the EU elections, most (euphemism for all) people I know just vote to the party they prefer in terms of national or regional politics. Almost no one votes because they want a given European directive to be implemented.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I have actually made some effort to find out what each of my country&amp;#x27;s parties voted in some EU decision, and most of the times I failed. It&amp;#x27;s not clear what decisions come from the Commission or from Parliament (many come from the Commission which is not even directly elected but elected by local governments, by the way). And even for those from Parliament, it&amp;#x27;s not clear how to find detailed results of Parliament votes. Mind you, I&amp;#x27;m not saying there is no way - probably there is one, if you are very well informed or have a lot of time, but there is definitely no way that I could find in 20 minutes of Googling, and most people won&amp;#x27;t make a greater investment than that.&lt;p&gt;Not sure if it&amp;#x27;s the same in all countries, and not sure how to fix it... but yes, I do have the perception that EU institutions are detached from citizens.&lt;p&gt;That said, this has its pros. If citizens had more of a say, we&amp;#x27;d probably have no low-emmission zones, no or almost no pollution regulations, etc. Many environmental policies that are, IMO, unquestionably good, are pushed to reluctant citizens using the &amp;quot;hey, don&amp;#x27;t blame me, it comes from Brussels&amp;quot; wildcard, and we are better for it (again, IMO). Sad, but true.</text><parent_chain><item><author>mrtksn</author><text>&amp;gt;The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing&lt;p&gt;What is the base of this claim? There are EU elections this year FYI.</text></item><item><author>dantondwa</author><text>Obviously, this is about creating the infrastructure for a continent-wide surveillance program, using children pornography as a troy horse.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing, at least until said European laws get implemented locally.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>ChatControl: EU ministers want to exempt themselves</title><url>https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-want-to-exempt-themselves/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>elric</author><text>Those two statements are orthogonal. EU elections have little impact on EU institutions. The elections are only for the European Parliament. The European Commission, which controls the institutions and dictates policy, does not get elected by the populace.&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of criticism (warranted, IMO) on this state of affairs.</text><parent_chain><item><author>mrtksn</author><text>&amp;gt;The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing&lt;p&gt;What is the base of this claim? There are EU elections this year FYI.</text></item><item><author>dantondwa</author><text>Obviously, this is about creating the infrastructure for a continent-wide surveillance program, using children pornography as a troy horse.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing, at least until said European laws get implemented locally.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>ChatControl: EU ministers want to exempt themselves</title><url>https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-want-to-exempt-themselves/</url></story>