It’s partly their fault, but the copyright directive was formulated by officials not directly elected by population. The whole process was shady (things like changing numbers of articles to confuse protesters, etc.), and that shadiness is a systemic problem in EU.
I was pro-EU until mentioned law was introduced, but with the recent crisis it really seem that EU is mostly good at using its power to cater to special interest groups and do petty things like trying to force member states to rise women retirement age or implement brutal austerity measures, and not for dealing with crisis.
They could for example offer centralized purchase and distribution of personal protective equipment to member states. EU as a whole would have way greater bargaining power than individual states.
You’re right about this, it would probably be the same in Poland, but of the two bad outcomes I prefer having internet as it is now even if that means way lower standard of living. Reforming EU legislative process would be the best option, but I don’t have much hope for that.
Hope not, but the last serious war in my region ended in 1945 (there were nasty events after that but nothing even remotely comparable), and Poland joined EU only in 2004, so there’s lots of time in between.
US federal government at least can be voted out more easily. With current emergency response (like confiscating PPE purchased by individual states and later forcing states to bid on it) it seems to be doing more harm than good, but there’s hope it will still be corrected after elections. On the other hand if US federal government introduced mandatory internet censorship like the one that will be implemented in EU soon, that would be a different matter.
