Comment by shevy-java 4 hours ago
Ursula is basically a lobbyist without much expertise in anything.
So she just parrots about how great xyz is, then she dishes out taxpayer's money to this or that group - typically corporations.
I think the whole EU should be reformed. We don't need lobbyists really.
> What would you suggest?
Lenin once said that "Every cook should learn to govern the state."
And that's how we should do it. Random lottery, pretty much the same way we choose election assessors or jury members.
> where are the lobbyists that prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected citizens
Voting is there to keep incentives aligned with the population at large.
On specific issues, lobbying is also feasible for non-corporate entities; consider right-to-repair initiatives or pro-climate NGOs.
> Industries that cant comply to modern standards should be harmed.
Those "modern standards" need to be codified into law, and feedback from established companies is valuable for doing that.
> We dont need industries willing to pay lobbyists to keep fossil fuels alive for example.
Those lobbyists represent the interests of a good portion of the economy. If you disregard their feedback, your risk damaging/destabilizing your economy for unclear gain, and the resulting backlash is going to more than undo any progress you made anyway.
> [...] feedback from established companies is valuable for doing that.
This is exactly what led us to fall behind in electric car development and construction.
It's the "unreasonable" rules that were unilaterally implemented that made car companies panic and finally start competing.
> Those lobbyists represent the interests of a good portion of the economy
No, they represent the interests of a few shareholders.
> It's the "unreasonable" rules that were unilaterally implemented that made car companies panic and finally start competing.
I believe the margin for effective regulation is much smaller than you think.
Sure, the EU could've mandated zero-emission vehicles from 2020 on in, say, 2010. But what would have happened? Carmakers would have made giant losses because their production facilities become worthless overnight (and laid off swathes of people); prices for vehicles and transport would've invariably gone through the roof and it is quite likely that the whole industry would have picked the "wrong" technology to bet on, like fuel cells, synthetic fuel or even hydrogen combustion.
Compare how much pushback you get in the general population against costly pro-climate policy already (very important to look past your own bubble on this!) and it seems clear to me that this would have failed competely (doing great economical damage, possibly a full-blown crisis), and would have probably been rolled back by the next election at the latest.
> Lobbyism is very easy to complain about and can easily devolve into corruption, but it has a very clear purpose: To prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected industries without gain.
Industries are not the only thing affected by policy, citizens are affected too.
Not harming industries often means harming normal people, and industries have a much stronger lobbying power than normal people,
Lobbying could be ok if every interaction with politicians were recorded and public, and if the money you have wouldn't matter on how easily you can reach the lawmakers.
If lobbying were illegal, lawmakers could inform their decisions by turning to independent experts, who provide some slightly more impartial information
Lobbyists are how companies talk to governments. If you believe that companies create value, then you should believe that companies should communicate with governments. It can help prevent low quality regulations from being pushed through.
Of course what they say should be validated and taken with appropriate weight. Companies are usually blinkered; they know a lot about their specialist area but aren't incentivized to consider collective action problems or externalities. Something similar can be said for every political interest group. Governing effectively means balancing everyone's interests.
> If you believe that companies create value, then you should believe that companies should communicate with governments
Sorry, you're going to have to prove that.
Companies are made up of people, and it's completely reasonable to assume that if people were allowed to have a voice within government, then they could also speak on behalf of their own interests, which will often coincide with that of the companies that they're involved with.
There's no reason to consider companies a separate entity that has its own power to communicate and many reasons not to do that.
> Ursula is basically a lobbyist without much expertise in anything.
She doesn't need to have any expertise, nobody can have deep expertise on everything. It's basically a politician job to have no clue and find reliable sources for an educated decision. And this usually fails hard on bleeding edge topics, because not many have an educated opinion at that point.
But as a side note, she did study something medical, so she does have some deeper expertise outside the political area.
> I think the whole EU should be reformed.
No reform can fix this problem. And always calling for reforms because of some detail not working how you want it is harmful.
Sometimes you have to rewrite from scratch when the original is broken beyond repair and institutional knowledge is lost.
A young dev may have an easier time seeing this.
> She doesn't need to have any expertise
By living in a bubble, she became less knowledgeable on common matters than an average citizen, and this even extends to her cabinet.
The proof at hand is the story of her "GPS-jammed" landing in Plovdiv.
She lied, her press secretary lied and there was none around to tell them about ADS-B, FlightRadar24 and how these lies can be trivially verified.
> By living in a bubble, she became less knowledgeable on common matters that an average citizen
I would trust an average citizen in those matters even less. We are not talking here about the daily egg-prices or which is the hottest celebrity at the moment. That woman is the leader of the executive branch of a Pan-National Organization. This is by definition a job with problems, which are very far away from the daily dread of the average citizen.
> The proof at hand is the story of her landing in Plovdiv.
What are you talking about? Pretty sure she is not flying here own plane, nor making the technical decision when it lands. Whatever happened there, has no relation to whichever abilities she might have or is lacking.
> What are you talking about?
Sorry for not being specific enough. I am talking about the "GPS jamming" of the plane that she flew to Plovdiv 31 August 2025.
Here are the fake news by Ursula von der Leyen press secretary at the morning briefing next day: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/video/I-276341
Here FlightRadar24 publishing the facts: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1962565122326700178
Here is the parliamentary question that asks why EU Commission was spreading fake news: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/O-10-2025-0000...
The majority of HN readers would have immediately understood that such lies can be easily disproved.
That there was none around Ursula von der Leyen nor her press secretary to warn them about this is really worrying me.
Not only these ladies are clueless... the whole cabinet is probably as clueless as they are.
If you take time and watch that press conference, you'll notice something even more alarming. Podesta, the press secretary, uses the words front and frontline quite a lot and give the impression that they are already at war.
The EU comes with a whole range of flaws, that's true, but as far as I'm concerned it's still the best place to live in the world as far as personal freedom, quality of life, etc, go. Fixing the bad bits is important, yes, but you gotta be careful not to break too many of the good bits while you're doing it.
Couldn't agree more. As a European: Yes, there's a lot (and I mean A LOT!) of things that could be improved but for all that is bad, it could be much worse. Especially when you look around. There are only few countries I would permanently move to. Nearly all of them are European.
I'm not a fan of her either, but what do you actually expect?
Politicians are not generally domain specialists anywhere, their purpose is to make decisions and serve as a pretty face for some more or less coherent policy.
Lobbyism is very easy to complain about and can easily devolve into corruption, but it has a very clear purpose: To prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected industries without gain. This is especially necessary at the EU level, because the main purpose of that whole organisation is to lower trade barriers and regulatory friction-- lobbyists are somewhat helpful and necessary in that.
> I think the whole EU should be reformed
What would you suggest?