Europe
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons), archive:is,ph,today (their JS DDoS websites)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)
view the rest of the comments
I'll have to speak in general terms because I cant know every specific scenario.
What purpose would deportation of a citizen serve? One of the defining things about citizenship is the right to live in the place you have citizenship. Typically countries cannot leave persons stateless so deportation would be pointless, at most they pay for an air fare back, assuming there's somewhere you can deport them to.
You're right, fines should be levied equally if that's the appropriate punishment. Putting someone in jail is expensive, it would seem counter to the point if the punishment for "abusing the system" was to further extract funds from the system to pay for someone's housing and food would it not?
Tom Hanks has tried to leave the chat but is stuck living in the airport terminal.
This one is interesting, because they are proposing to revoke the citizenship and deport them.
I understood them, but I'd argue it's utterly asinine. If you strip citizenship you've created a stateless person, which is mostly avoided where possible - but let's imagine for a second this was the case. What do you do with a stateless person? They don't have the right to reside anywhere, every country has the right to refuse entry to them. How do you deport someone when no-one will accept them? Just leave them on runways around the world?
How long before they're put on a return flight? How long before everyone closes borders with your country because you're leaving 1000s of criminals on runways around the world?
Presumably the same purpose (if any) the deportation of a noncitizen would serve.
So why not take away those rights of citizens, if deportation is so beneficial?
Well, no, because citizens have the right to reside, non citizens don't. As mentioned previously citizen can just rock up to the border and re-enter.
Take away citizenship rights? That would create a stateless person. Even if we ignore the fact most countries can't or won't do that you've now got a scenario where the person you want to deport has no right to reside anywhere.
So when you show up with a plane full of ex Swedes at some airport the receiving country will go "oh those people have no right to be here, entry denied." At which point you can either take them back to Sweden or leave them on the runway. I'd imagine it wouldn't take long for most countries to deny entry to any transport leaving Sweden.
I don't believe I've said it was beneficial at all.
Okay, but those rights can of course be taken away. There is plenty of precedent for that, the UK deported undesirables to Australia, and in the interbellum period several European governments opted to take away the rights of those citizens viewed as a threat to public order. Even if citizens aren't deported, Sweden could opt to, e.g., concentrate them in camps on Gotland or so.
Huh, imagine that. One might almost reach the conclusion that citizenship is a problematic concept that perhaps ought not exist at all. Almost. Radical minds might even go as far as suggest that blue-eyed people shouldn't have different rights from brown-eyed one, or that blondes shouldn't have different rights than brunettes.
In theory, yes, in practice any government that seriously suggested it would likely not last long enough to enact the policy.
Penal colonies? No citizenship was lost that I'm aware of and they had the right to return on emancipation. It's just jail but really really far away. I'm also not entirely sure we should be taking cues from 1700s Britain.
So prison then, only maybe worse? I'm not sure what your point here is.
Seems a bit of a jump from any conversation we've had here. Given it fundamentally governs the relationship between government and people it's hard to get away from.
Comparing citizenship to hair colour is indeed radical, foolish would perhaps be a better word.
Yes, and there will come a day when governments attempting to reintroduce citizenship laws will be viewed in a similar way.
In fact, citizenship as we know it today has only been around for a little over a century. Moreover, we already have a template for how to get rid of it: within the EU, governments must grant equal rights to each EU citizen with only a few exceptions.
Then you now understand how foolish you would have sounded to the ears of Ferdinand and Isabella if you had dared to suggest Jews and Muslims should have equal rights to Gentiles.
Maybe, maybe not, none of us can predict the future.
So it's not actually gotten rid of it any way? In fact expulsion is still permissible within the EU. I'm not sure you're correct about citizenship as we know it only existing for around a century, but maybe our ideas about it are different. Certainly it's changed, most things do, but it's always been about the conference of certain rights and responsibilities on individuals.
Do I? I'd imagine a great many modern things would sound foolish to a 1400s monarch. We are, however, living in the present.
That is true. However, the overall trend across history, with some interruptions, has been one of decreasing bigotry and narrow-mindedness. With this in mind, it is plausible that insidious discrimination based on citizenship will one day not be as accepted as it is today.
It has, in fact, gotten rid of it in most ways (within the EU).
My advice to you would be to investigate to what extent you may be incorrect in this matter. For example, did you know that the UK introduced its first limitations to migration (meaning: completely open borders beforehand) in 1905 (bonus points if you can guess which ethnic group the restrictions were primarily targeted at)? Or that, prior to WW1, Europeans could freely travel across borders without border checks or identity documents, which originally were carried only by diplomats, envoys and the like?
Of course, it is true that citizenship did not come out of the blue. Other kinds of caste systems preceded and inspired it. But nationalism itself emerged only in the 19th Century - how could there have been nationalist-based restrictions before the concept even existed? To be sure, there were campaigns of genocide, pogroms and discrimination - but they were often based on informal cultural, tribal, feudal and religious ties, not formal national citizenship.
Yes, I am aware I am quite far ahead of the primitive mindset of today's plebeians.
Has it? And here's us talking about how immigration is more restrictive now than it's ever been.
So it hasn't been gotten rid of in any meaningful way, if you except everything that contradicts the point you're trying to make you can make anything sound true.
Yeah, I thought that was what you were getting at - that would be immigration policy, not the fundamental role of citizenship.
You're right, citizenship has been around for thousands of years. Again you appear to be confusing immigration policy with citizenship.
Just getting into hyperbole now, deporting an individual criminal is not the same as a genocide or a pogrom. Tell me this, at what time in history were individuals free to join a social grouping and benefit from the shared collective without the assent of the group?
You're certainly conceited, much more than that I can't say.
You don't have to take my word for it, you can just look up in which ways citizenship still matters. This might be an instructive exercise.
Is your claim really that a medieval French peasant living in the countryside near Paris (and thus a subject of the King of France) was a "French citizen"? Again, citizenship associated with nation states could not exist, because nation states didn't!
I am not "confusing" anything. However, immigration laws are obviously one of the main vehicles of citizenship-based discrimination.
Well, in the UK prior to 1905. Of course there were informal ways in which "groups" of various kinds would not "assent." The antisemitism of those days became the driving force to formalize the bigotry that until then had only been informally expressed.
Non-citizens can be expelled Non-citizens don't have the right to vote in national elections Non-citizens don't always have access to welfare
These all seem fairly major to me.
No, I didn't say anything about medieval French citizens.
Okay, it's just because you keep talking about immigration policy and then saying it's citizenship.
Why are we bringing bigotry and anti-Semitism into it? If me and my mates go to play a game of football and a random guy appears and starts playing and hoofing the ball every which way so we go get security to remove him it's got nothing to do with anti-Semitism. I'm not saying there haven't been exclusions based on religion, but it's entirely irrelevant to the point I was making.
EU citizens have the same rights to welfare as citizens do in EU countries. They also have partial voting rights. EU citizens can be expelled only under exceptional circumstances.
It would be trivial - and desirable - to eliminate these restrictions.
So, of which nation state was said peasant a "citizen"?
Because, in this specific example, antisemitism was the reason immigration laws were created in the first place. In other cases, other types of bigotry and xenophobia might have played a role.
As far as I know in Germany at least you need 5 years residence before fully qualifying for welfare if you're not a German citizen.
So they can't vote in national elections as I said. You can be expelled or denied residence on health grounds or public policy grounds. Regardless, you can be expelled, as I said. Some government jobs are also not available to non-citizens.
You just state stuff as if it's true and must be accepted. This is just an opinion. Presumably if it were both desirable and trivial it would already be the case, no?
You can probably trace citizenship back to the ancient Greeks in one form or another, but you'll likely try and change the definition to have to be about nation states or some other narrow definition to suit your point again, so there's not really much point in trying to discuss it.
This specific example was chosen by you, presumably because it was an example of antisemitism. I was thinking more like Ug and his gang in the stone age, but it doesn't really matter. Tribes\social groupings have existed as far back as we have history, who, how and when people are excluded is varied and nuanced but not everything is a racist or bigoted action.
A residency requirement is not a citizenship requirement. A practical example, of some relevance to my personal situation. In the Netherlands, part of the retirement system is a basic income for the elderly. The requirement for receiving this basic income is having been a resident as an adult. So a Dutch citizen who lived part of their adult life outside of the Netherlands and moves back when retiring will only receive some part of the basic income. However, a Belgian citizen (for example) who spent their adult life in the Netherlands will receive the full amount.
Anyway, the only point I wanted to make is that it is possible for EU citizenship to entirely replace national citizenship - as it already does to a large degree. And if that can be done for a continent, it can be done globally.
What an odd argument. Was it not desirable and trivial to abolish antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany?
Instead of guessing what origin citizenship might have, why not simply look up its actual history? I can sympathize with the plight of someone who has been inundated with a bukkake of nationalist propaganda throughout their lifetime, so let me give the synopsis. Citizenship gradually emerged in the modern period in Europe and during that time replaced the previous system, which included four castes (estates): the nobility, the clergy, the burghers (from which the word "citizen" derives - citizen, city, get it?) and the peasants/serfs. Some remnants of these castes remain, but for the most part the modern citizen grew from what used to be the burgher class. Indeed, in many proto-democracies, voting rights were initially restricted to the landowning class (i.e. burghers), while peasants remained formally discriminated against. The distinction, at least formally and legally, faded away roughly around the time of WW1 (around which time many European governments also abolished the nobility, or reduced them to ceremonial roles only), and from this point we can say there is something resembling modern citizenship, and a system with just two castes: citizens and non-citizens. (Next step: a system with just one caste: people.)
Yes, tribalism is as old as mankind. Yet, while you can seemingly recognize there is something wrong with Ug and his gang being bigoted against the next tribe, the nobility and clergy being bigoted against the peasantry, and Adolf and his gang being bigoted against Jews, you can't quite seem to grasp how citizenship-based discrimination is equally problematic and equally rooted in bigotry.
Some day, even someone as enlightened as myself (by today's rather unimpressive standards) will likely be viewed as backward and narrow-minded. Will we live to see it? Unlikely. The brown winds are gathering; fascism is now the most popular ideology in the West by far, and the last time this was the case things did not end well. Even so, I have some optimism that the aftermath of WW3 will induce some self-reflection on the side of humanity, and a reassessment of citizenship as a concept.
I never said it was, German citizens get access to the benefit without the residency requirement.
No, clearly it wasn't, it took a world war to abolish them.
I did, it's generally accepted to have it's origins in ancient Greece.
No, I expressly said it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with bigotry.
Aaaaaad we're back to conceit.
That's illegal by EU law. German citizens who move from abroad to Germany must be treated the same way as other EU citizens when it comes to social security.
It would have been trivial to abolish them, from a legal and administrative perspective.
That's incorrect on both counts. Again, you don't have to take my word for it, you are free to read about it yourself.
Must or are?
And yet from a practical standpoint it was not.
I did and that's what I found.
Must. I know from practical experience reality and legal principle are not always in agreement. The point, however, is that it's possible.
The abolition of individual national citizenship was, of course, always the endgame of European federalists. It's why European citizenship exists as a concept.
Yes, I am aware that the concept of equal rights is not a popular one. I am speaking only about the administrative and legal route to effect such a concept, not about popularizing it among the lumpen proletariat, for which I am, admittedly, quite unsuitable.
Even Wikipedia's article on the history of citizenship, which (unsurprisingly) takes a much more nuanced view than I do and discusses the (tenuous) link between the polis and modern citizenship at length, does not come within light years of suggesting it is "generally accepted" that it "has origins in ancient Greece." The ruling caste of the polis has much stronger parallels with the Kshatriyas than with modern citizenship.
To be fair, prisons in Europe are about rehabilitation and not punishment. Why should Swedish taxpayers pay for the rehabilitation of a non-swede?
Edit: I am talking about citizenship specifically
Because laws and governance focusing on citizenship, ethnicity etc is wildly against the sentiment of equal treatment and value of humans. It's unlawful as well. We don't want an apartheid system.
I see how my comment could be seen otherwise, but I am only speaking of citizenship.
Deportations of Non-Citizen criminals is legal in most countries.
(I'm guessing your apartheid comment was based on the assumption of me meaning ethnicity.)
Oh no, I didn't assume you meant ethnicity, that was just an example and apartheid as well. It's a better example than the US 'equal but separate'. I just answered why Swedes are supposed to pay for non-Swedes.
What I wanted to point out is that those who has residence in the country can't be treated differently before the law. Citizenship or not, the law applies and all it's benefits and consequences.
On another note, the prison sentence is carried out and then the convict is deported, meaning we rehabilitated someone and then got rid of them, not benefiting from the rehabilitated person.
I'm not quite sure how to connect apartheid to the deportation of non citizens? Apartheid is different treatment based on ethnicity, not citizenship. At least per the definition on wikipedia "a system of institutionalised racial segregation".
Are you saying it should be like that or it is? Because as of now, citizens and non-citizens are definitely treated differently.( In Sweden and in most countries) One simple example is the right to Vote. You are only allowed to vote if you are a citizen. (Although some countries allow voting in local elections for non-citizens) But I would even disagree if you meant it should be that way. Staying with the example of voting. I don't believe anyone should be able to move to a country and just be able to vote. That would be a huge vulnerability for democracies.
No argument here. That is obviously nonsensical. It should be either right away(After due process) or not at all.
Edit: Adding to the point of being treated differently under the law depending on whether you are a citizen or not. Thinking about it, it means exactly that by definition no? If we were not to differentiate between citizen and non-citizen, what would be the point of having citizenship at all?
Why should Swedish taxpayers pay for the rehabilitation of a Swede?
Why wouldn't they? That's like asking why would they pay for their fellow citizens healthcare.
You're almost starting to get it.
Yeah, because getting sick is the same as committing a crime lmao
Aw shucks, you're not quite there yet. Let me spell it out: for someone who is not an extreme ultranationalist, contributing to public services for the common good is as natural (in fact, quite a bit more so) as contributing to those services arbitrarily restricted to citizens.
Aw shucks, you nearly managed to not sound like a condescending dick, but not quite! And you clearly don't seem to understand what I was saying. Too bad.