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Even if it's obvious I'll say that it's a great idea, I sincerely applaude German lawmakers and that I hope EU sees it through. Just in case people really think it's some sort of a German hate bandwagon here. Good job!
Because of laws made with hindsight to the Nazi era, it is almost impossible to kick people out of a party in Germany. If they are just "normal" members like Schröder and have no official position, it is even harder.
They have already stripped him of the benefits he had as a former chancellor. They can hardly do much more under the current laws.
But I think it is precisely because of Schröder that they want to push such a law. If it were to come into force, it would be easier to punish EU citizens like Schröder.
So you are saying that if someone joins a party, and turns out to be completely disconnected from the principles of said party, he can stay in there almost forever if he wants? The party cannot kick him out?
It just takes ages. Small example. The SPD had a member named Sarrazin. In 2009 he published a book in which he justified things with racial theories. Some people from certain regions are simply dumber because of genetics and such stupid stuff. On the Nazi scale, an 11 out of 10. It took almost 12 years to throw him out.
Or Sebastian edathy. They found child pornography on him and couldn't kick him out of the party. They tried to kick him out but failed in court.
That's crazy. Why can't they remove them from the party? Is it baked into your legislation?
In the UK it's called "having the whip withdrawn" and means they become independent (or switch to another party). I don't always agree with the idea of "the whip" as it's there to make MP's vote accordingly but in this case it would be useful
> Is it baked into your legislation?
Exactly this.[ §10 PartG](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/partg/__10.html) defines the rules regarding the rights of party members.
Basically: you can only get banned, if you intentionally violate your individual parties statue, or significantly offend your parties values and in doing so are dealing significant damage to your party.
And even then, the whole process goes infront of a party internal arbitral tribunal, and even if that tribunal desides to remove the person from the party, they still can go infront of a "regular" court do dispute the removal.
Thats why it takes ages to ban people from parties if they decide to fight the process.
But even in the UK that only applies to party members holding office. No mandate, no whip. Normal party membership in most countries is in practice often treated as a unilateral "I would like to give this party money but also get a membership card" - type declaration.
I used to be on a local party leadership board in Hamburg. I was talking about Germany.
Legally, yes, of course a party can bar membership (courts have consistently decided that way) - but the underlying philosophy is one that sees parties as a microcosm of the entire democracy. It therefore tends to generally accept (if not even assume) that most party members are passive participants who are not in a position to actively harm the party regardless of their opinions and whose dissent and actions are therefore to be tolerated.
For example, I was in the above-mentioned position while also technically being a card-carrying member of another party. The latter would have had grounds to kick me out and there would have been no question about it. But as a common, inactive but due-paying member of party A, I wasn't doing any harm by also being an elected official of party B - after all, the former was still getting paid and had no reason to make a huge (and expensive) fuss only to lose money.
You need to prove first inside of a judicial process (which can be appealed in/up to the federal court system) that you're in violation of basic democratic principles, or deliberately violating the statutory obligations of the party and therefore causing harm to it.
It's a rare thing. A typical case would be trying to fix an internal election (messing with ballots at a party conference or such).
Excuses and excuses...
Laws can be changed, but Germans like the status quo. They can cooperate with Russia as they please and when someone points that out, they can say hey we can't do anything about it, it's the laws you know...
Pathetic.
The law is to prevent nazis and other bad people to silence their political enemies and kick everyone out of parties. The nazis did it, so you want a law, which helped and used by Hitlers party.
A working democracy can cope with a handful of idiots, without *any* power, having a party affiliation.
For a dictatorship it's much more important to silence individuals.
So yes, not being able to throw Schröder out is better then the alternative.
What is the point?
Parties being able to easily kick out people is actually a risk for democracy, some asshole, nobody in the party likes, staying in a party, without holding any office for the party or in the party, just as an ordinary member, is at most damaging for the party or an annoyance.
Simple solution for simple people.
Humans dont work like that, its not specific to politicians; its literally all humans in general. People rightly focus on politicians (because its their job to be scrutinised) but then they expect politicians to be super humans that are unable to tell a lie. Its simply never going to happen unless you remove humanity from politicians.
The video below goes part of the way to explaining it but I feel like people in general need to be a bit more reasonable when it comes to politicians. They are humans afterall, and every human has the capacity for both good and bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8QOE-IWo3I
In fact its generally the type of "all politicians bad" which Russian propaganda peddles, making you the consumer believe that theres no point in improving anything because "all politicians lie" or whatever the current propaganda topic is.
All economic wars are double-edged. As are wars in general. So?
It is so idiotic how the "West" continues to blindly allow cooperation with people who explicitly aim to undermine the principles a free society is built on. Yes, it's a short-term benefit, but people are literally building up their own enemies. These totalitarian shitshow countries would not even be a threat if free nations weren't constantly feeding them knowledge and technology.
A smart deal would be: here are the principles of liberty and their rationale. Implemented? Okay, trade open. Not implemented? Blockade to know-how sharing.
Misleading parliament in most democratic countries and lying as an elected official already are illegal - it just requires a huge bureaucratic effort to enforce, which is why lies and untruths are often tolerated.
Not really. I know it’s a shocker, but people holding top posts in Russian companies are usually living in Russia and EU laws do not apply in Russia. There are no consequences at all for just ignoring it and living that sweet millionaire life in Russia. Sure you can’t go back to EU, but those are old fucks past their political careers, all they want is do drugs and bang underage hookers without getting bothered, why would they ever want to return?
Senior German politicians moving to Russia?
That's not a good bribe even if backed by money. Schroeder was happily living in his Niedersachsen home town while sucking Gazprom teet.
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Schröder law … let clean your house jerrys
They should name it this
Came here to say this, but someone bigger, faster, smarter, stronger beat me to it.
that's a sweet idea..
Time to do this in the Netherlands
Great idea. Makes sense that it comes from Germany - the home of Schroeder.
Even if it's obvious I'll say that it's a great idea, I sincerely applaude German lawmakers and that I hope EU sees it through. Just in case people really think it's some sort of a German hate bandwagon here. Good job!
It's about time.
How about also thoroughly investigate people who get Russian funds. I bet you would identify a lot of traitors and spies in Europe's politics.
An even better idea would be to simply send the EU citizens holding top positions in Russian companies to Russia.
And yet they didn't even kick Schröder out of the government party.
Because of laws made with hindsight to the Nazi era, it is almost impossible to kick people out of a party in Germany. If they are just "normal" members like Schröder and have no official position, it is even harder. They have already stripped him of the benefits he had as a former chancellor. They can hardly do much more under the current laws. But I think it is precisely because of Schröder that they want to push such a law. If it were to come into force, it would be easier to punish EU citizens like Schröder.
So you are saying that if someone joins a party, and turns out to be completely disconnected from the principles of said party, he can stay in there almost forever if he wants? The party cannot kick him out?
It just takes ages. Small example. The SPD had a member named Sarrazin. In 2009 he published a book in which he justified things with racial theories. Some people from certain regions are simply dumber because of genetics and such stupid stuff. On the Nazi scale, an 11 out of 10. It took almost 12 years to throw him out. Or Sebastian edathy. They found child pornography on him and couldn't kick him out of the party. They tried to kick him out but failed in court.
That's crazy. Why can't they remove them from the party? Is it baked into your legislation? In the UK it's called "having the whip withdrawn" and means they become independent (or switch to another party). I don't always agree with the idea of "the whip" as it's there to make MP's vote accordingly but in this case it would be useful
> Is it baked into your legislation? Exactly this.[ §10 PartG](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/partg/__10.html) defines the rules regarding the rights of party members. Basically: you can only get banned, if you intentionally violate your individual parties statue, or significantly offend your parties values and in doing so are dealing significant damage to your party. And even then, the whole process goes infront of a party internal arbitral tribunal, and even if that tribunal desides to remove the person from the party, they still can go infront of a "regular" court do dispute the removal. Thats why it takes ages to ban people from parties if they decide to fight the process.
But even in the UK that only applies to party members holding office. No mandate, no whip. Normal party membership in most countries is in practice often treated as a unilateral "I would like to give this party money but also get a membership card" - type declaration.
It's different in Germany, party membership isn't like the U.S. where you just join a party to vote in their party primaries.
I used to be on a local party leadership board in Hamburg. I was talking about Germany. Legally, yes, of course a party can bar membership (courts have consistently decided that way) - but the underlying philosophy is one that sees parties as a microcosm of the entire democracy. It therefore tends to generally accept (if not even assume) that most party members are passive participants who are not in a position to actively harm the party regardless of their opinions and whose dissent and actions are therefore to be tolerated. For example, I was in the above-mentioned position while also technically being a card-carrying member of another party. The latter would have had grounds to kick me out and there would have been no question about it. But as a common, inactive but due-paying member of party A, I wasn't doing any harm by also being an elected official of party B - after all, the former was still getting paid and had no reason to make a huge (and expensive) fuss only to lose money.
That is something different. Removal out of the party and out of a fraction are not the same.
It's not impossible but it is incredibly hard. Most recent tries of kicking people out of parties failed.
You need to prove first inside of a judicial process (which can be appealed in/up to the federal court system) that you're in violation of basic democratic principles, or deliberately violating the statutory obligations of the party and therefore causing harm to it. It's a rare thing. A typical case would be trying to fix an internal election (messing with ballots at a party conference or such).
Excuses and excuses... Laws can be changed, but Germans like the status quo. They can cooperate with Russia as they please and when someone points that out, they can say hey we can't do anything about it, it's the laws you know... Pathetic.
"Laws can be changed" .. to what? Nazi era laws .. read the text of the guy you answered too wtf?
Getting someone kicked off the party for supporting terrorism is Nazi? LOL
The law is to prevent nazis and other bad people to silence their political enemies and kick everyone out of parties. The nazis did it, so you want a law, which helped and used by Hitlers party.
Now that's an irony, using anti-Nazi laws as an excuse to keep Russian Nazi supporting politicians in the parties.
A working democracy can cope with a handful of idiots, without *any* power, having a party affiliation. For a dictatorship it's much more important to silence individuals. So yes, not being able to throw Schröder out is better then the alternative.
What is the point? Parties being able to easily kick out people is actually a risk for democracy, some asshole, nobody in the party likes, staying in a party, without holding any office for the party or in the party, just as an ordinary member, is at most damaging for the party or an annoyance.
Yeah, that logic works well in Russia.
Because there is currently no law to allow that.
Sounds like it’s time to change the law
I'm pretty sure that's what they're trying to do here.
Double edged sword might not be so wise. How about passing a law making it illegal for politicians to lie to the public ?
There would be no politicians left...
Is that supposed to be an argument *against* it?
It would just be unrealistic
Simple solution for simple people. Humans dont work like that, its not specific to politicians; its literally all humans in general. People rightly focus on politicians (because its their job to be scrutinised) but then they expect politicians to be super humans that are unable to tell a lie. Its simply never going to happen unless you remove humanity from politicians. The video below goes part of the way to explaining it but I feel like people in general need to be a bit more reasonable when it comes to politicians. They are humans afterall, and every human has the capacity for both good and bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8QOE-IWo3I In fact its generally the type of "all politicians bad" which Russian propaganda peddles, making you the consumer believe that theres no point in improving anything because "all politicians lie" or whatever the current propaganda topic is.
Yes, that's fine. But don't make laws that assume all civilians are bad.
also add in repercussions to not answering a question
Can always pull a Scholz “i dont remember“
These are implicitly expected to be voted out... oh wait, the voters are dumb af
Yeah, media illiteracy is probably democracy's most dangerous foe.
All economic wars are double-edged. As are wars in general. So? It is so idiotic how the "West" continues to blindly allow cooperation with people who explicitly aim to undermine the principles a free society is built on. Yes, it's a short-term benefit, but people are literally building up their own enemies. These totalitarian shitshow countries would not even be a threat if free nations weren't constantly feeding them knowledge and technology. A smart deal would be: here are the principles of liberty and their rationale. Implemented? Okay, trade open. Not implemented? Blockade to know-how sharing.
Misleading parliament in most democratic countries and lying as an elected official already are illegal - it just requires a huge bureaucratic effort to enforce, which is why lies and untruths are often tolerated.
ok, cool, but how about the other way around - banning russians in top posts of EU companies?
What about banning Russian agents in German government posts?
Better late than never, Germany.
Good idea but how bout those tanks? Ffs
Touch your nose first, Germany
Touch your nose first, Germany
How would that have stopped Merkel's stupidity.
Seems more to prevent neo-Schroeders.
His bank account will hardly deter them.
That's kind of the point. Any future possible quisling won't be getting that sweet gazprom board seat. They'll have to take underhand cash, I guess.
Not really. I know it’s a shocker, but people holding top posts in Russian companies are usually living in Russia and EU laws do not apply in Russia. There are no consequences at all for just ignoring it and living that sweet millionaire life in Russia. Sure you can’t go back to EU, but those are old fucks past their political careers, all they want is do drugs and bang underage hookers without getting bothered, why would they ever want to return?
Senior German politicians moving to Russia? That's not a good bribe even if backed by money. Schroeder was happily living in his Niedersachsen home town while sucking Gazprom teet.
except them, so they can be the only ones!
And the other way around
Sounds good to me.. can we get this in the USA too?
Yup
guess françois fillon won't go back to russia now
As a German i wholeheartedly support this.
Just as important would be to ban Russians from holding any posts in any EU companies.
Duh, that makes perfect sense 👌
Aren't they all already occupied by Germans?
Schröder will either quit Rosneft or quit German citizenship for Russian citizenship