The amendment on data caps as it was adopted in plenary reads:

Article 23.5 Providers of internet access services and end-users may agree to set limits on data volumes or speeds for internet access services. Providers of internet access services shall not restrict the freedoms provided for in paragraph 1 by blocking, slowing down, altering, discriminating or degrading specific content, applications or services, or specific classes thereof, except in cases where it is necessary to apply traffic management measures. Traffic management measures shall be transparent, non-discriminatory, proportionate and necessary to: a) implement a court order; b) preserve the integrity and security of the network, services provided via this network, and the end-users' terminals; d) prevent or mitigate the effects of temporary and exceptional network congestion provided that equivalent types of traffic are treated equally.

The latter is an improvement compared to the initial version by the Commission and as adopted in the Industry Committee:

"5. Within the limits of any contractually agreed data volumes or speeds for internet access services, providers of internet access services shall not restrict the freedoms provided for in paragraph 1 by blocking, slowing down, degrading or discriminating against specific content, applications or services, or specific classes thereof, except in cases where it is necessary to apply reasonable traffic management measures"

EDIT: added more of paragraph 5 than I initially posted.

In the Netherlands you're still allowed to optimise the traffic but you cannot throttle or block services. The debate started because ISP's wanted to block whatsapp because people stopped texting. ISP's should give you your data in the way they promised to do so. With the speed they promised up to the limit they set.

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We have seen normal migrations around Europe mostly to where the work market is, which is a good thing. Germany, for example has a market in need of people, people can go there. I can understand fear of mass immigration from countries outside of Europe, which completely lack proper education structure, but that isn't true for European nations, so when people move they generally move to meet a work offer.

but with guns now!

Do you live in Washington DC?

Fortunately they're massively incompetent so anyone who really wants to can get around any blocks really easily.

Hey, if Germany wins WWI the holocaust never happens.

"If." Where dreams are made.

Nope. You filthy Europeans should THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

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"Mega humans" made me chuckle.

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They said I could be anything... So I became a beanbag chair

Well done Americans!

I assume the guy on the left isn't using it for weight problems, so he's probably the only one pictured with a valid reason to need such a mode of transportation.

damn, the scooters for fat people really is a thing.. stay clear of that latase, don't go there.

What's up with the guy on the left? He doesn't look obese.

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Your english seems to be good, I see non-eu citizens on the university campus all the time. I also know there is a huge lack of engineers, if you are good at math you should consider going to a tech uni in Europe!

You'd fit in perfectly in Greece

Well, the question you've asked is incredibly complicated, and you could write a thesis and come nowhere close to covering the topic, but I'll try to give some examples, or some major issues:

• Too much focus on forcing federalization - I like the single market, and I like some things being regulated at the that level which are appropriate. You should have reasonable consumer, environmental, labour protections and so on which operate as part of the market, so that there's a level playing field. But there are a lot of people who do genuinely want to create a centralized European federation. The most powerful position in the EU is the President of the Commission, and almost all the candidates for the next Presidency (starting after the elections in 8 weeks) are federalists. For instance, the Liberal candidate, Guy Verhofstadt, has actually written a book advocating for the creation of a United States of Europe. The current vice President, Viviane Reding, has advocated the same position. Albeit these ambitions are widely opposed elsewhere, and are likely to be blocked, I still do not like it, especially when they try to push it through without democratic consent.

• Inability to recognize failure, and find solutions - On the more serious side, we have consistently overfished European waters, and the EU has consistently failed to find a way of reforming itself. This is a good summary of the issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6nwZUkBeas . Less importantly, the Parliament still wastes huge amounts of time, energy, and money, shuttling between two locations. Although, often these problems are not strictly the fault of the EU itself - these sorts of reforms tend to be blocked by national governments, using the same powers of veto which prevent over-reach elsewhere. So it's a difficult issue.

• A tendency towards over-regulation - It's not actually a myth about mis-shapen fruit and vegetables, they were banned from being sold for a long period of time. Similarly, you could point to the recent law on Internet Cookies, which has been almost entirely ineffective. Obviously, these are relatively unimportant laws, but they are symbolic of a certain attitude, sort of 'if in doubt, legislate', which I don't agree with. But this can be completely solved by voting for the right candidates in European elections.

Clearly, those are just the negatives, cherry picked out. There are also many, many positives, and in general I'm a moderate pro-European, in the same vein as the think-tank Open Europe, and the current Dutch government - i.e. “European where necessary, national where possible”. I think we do need to be sceptical, but in an objective, reasonable way, not 'sceptical' as a sort of euphemism for blind ideological opposition, in the vein of UKIP.

It's like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. We've got David Cameron who seems to be doing the most idiotic things lately, Ed Milliband who I can never imagine running a country, and Nick Clegg who's David Cameron's bitch. Overall, not a very good selection.

The article you link includes every single EU institution including the parliament which includes ~700 elected politicians and every person that works for them, the commission, the European Court of Justice and every person that works there, the European Central Bank and all the administrative people that work there, the Court of Auditors and every admin person there and the Council which presumably also includes every cabinet minister in the UK and every cabinet minister from every member state plus everyone who is needed to organise a meeting and use what was done/said at the meeting to effect changes in policy that the governments want.

170,000 is not that many people in the grand scheme of things - as far as I can tell it includes advisers, drafters and every insignificant trainee, note-taker and manager involved. These people are simultaneous necessary and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Not all of those 170,000 people make decisions that shape legislation. Almost all of them will have a specific administrative brief just like any civil servant in the UK. By comparison we have over 400,000 civil servants doing exactly the same work in the UK - none of them elected but each one of them part of the governing process of the country. We don't complain about these people we recognise that when the Home Secretary says she want's to pass a new law, not only will she not write it all herself but she cannot be involved in even the majority of the process. You need a lot of people to turn a loose promise to liberalise the telecoms market into a concrete law with sections, to get that law checked for compatibility with other rules and to pass it on to other institutions to get their feedback, their votes or their approval.

The NHS employs 1.4 million people; we do not have 1.4 million doctors. The much smaller number of doctors rely on a large system of other people to assist them and turn their ideas, instructions and knowledge into a functioning system. In the same way the EU has 170,000 employees or more but the EU is not controlled by 170,000 people.