The European Union is a concordance of member states based on shared political and economic policies. The EU maintains a single market and system of laws designed to address a limited set of matters. In those matters and only in those matters are all member states are expected to act as one; otherwise, most countries continue to maintain their own sense of autonomy and governance as described above.
EU Governance
Most of countries within the European Union retain the same governmental structure as they did 10 years ago. For example, the United Kingdom continues to be have a monarch as well as the Houses and a Prime Minister, and the French Republic retains its ministers and Secretaries of State. However, in the past decade, a wave of conservativism has crossed the continent. Currently, the majority of governments within the EU may be described as politically "right" of the spectrum, in what is clearly a response to the "discovery" of the SLC-Expressive.
The European Union (EU) itself is led by the European Council, with the European Commission as its executive branch. Neither entity has changed significantly since 2009. The spirit of the EU policies is to protect free movement of people and capital within the single market, including all goods and services involved in trade and food husbandry. Once the European Commission issues a "directive," each member state with the EU must begin to develop laws to implement compliance.
Notably, the President of the European Commission is perhaps the most powerful office in Europe, and chiefly responsible for initiation of legislation and enforcement. The office is currently being held by Timothy Eade, a "conservative" politician who has continued their predecessors' work with the EUSR (see below).
As a union that consists of otherwise autonomous members, it should be noted that the EU has no "law enforcement" arm that operates across borders. INTERPOL is a separate entity that has worked closely with the EU. Instead, enforcement of European Commission directives is typically performed through fines made to the individual member state.
Registration
By far the most controversial and dynamic common provision introduced to the European Union of the past decade has been the European Union SLC Registry, or EUSR (pronounced "User"), which first came into prominence in 2010.
The EUSR mandates the registration of all Expressive individuals residing in Europe must be registered according to a classification system that distinguishes based on the degree to which the individual represents a danger to non-SLC-E individuals. The EUSR allows for only two possible categories: Civilian and Restricted SLC-Expressive abilities. Restricted abilities include any "potentially hazardous and lethal" SLC-E effects. According to the policy, regional authorities have significant latitude about impose restrictions on the day-to-day life, personal freedom, and privacy of the lives of the SLC-E.
In practice, however, there is significant regional variation in the actual implementation of these provisions. This is in part due to significant differences in economy, infrastructure, cultural attitudes toward authority informed by history, as well as biases toward SLC-E. Prior to the SLC-E, human rights conflicts in the European Union primarily focused on discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, sex work and issues related to refugees and asylum seekers. The verbiage and concerns of humanitarian work related to those issues was rarely if ever consistent to begin with, but has often failed even further to map onto the plight of SLC-E individuals, not the least because the Suresh-linked Complex is generally an invisible "condition."
Obstacles to Enforcement
Within individual countries, the major obstacle to consistent enforcement of the EUSR has been resource shortage and infrastructure. Compliance is expensive, and the European Commission has no way of practically assisting individual countries.
While SLC-E genetic tests alone have become inexpensive to produce, this does not account for the costs of transportation as well as the man hours for agencies to fund the personnel required to conduct the testing, process and catalog the results, as well as oversight to limit deception and corruption. Furthermore, the testing equipment required for the "evaluation of hazard status" (EHS) remains highly questionable due to the diversity of SLC-E abilities. Such equipment has been under continuous refinement in various research and development departments both private and public for the past 10 years, a costly endeavor that has been beyond the budget of many countries within the EU.
Overview of Countries
Generally, countries with higher government interference as well as government spending have tended toward more stringent EUSR enforcement. Several NGOs have been following changes and rating countries by degree of compliance.
- The most draconian in EUSR enforcement has been the United Kingdom, followed shortly by Denmark, Spain, and Norway. In those countries, the SLC-E have faced significant suppression and control by local authorities. Higher levels of intervention including: regulations of SLC-E travel movements and incarcerations due to failure to Register. Non-SLC-E who have been seen to assist their fellow residents in escaping Registration have also been prosecuted by the authorities. Many of these countries have also experienced an increase in higher profile SLC-E type violent incidents, though none have come close to "the Bomb" in the United States, and it is not clear whether increasing intolerance caused or was caused by these occurrences.
- Other member states have been either moderate or "lackadaisical" in their compliance, such as France, the Netherlands, Poland and Italy. Several of these more moderate countries have formally "de-criminalized" non-Registration, which creates a structural double-bind for authorities. However, even in countries where non-Registration has not been criminalized, the SLC-E are potentially vulnerable to civil penalties. Several of those countries have further initiated legislation that discrimination on the basis of Registration or SLC-E status (e.g., by employers, landlords, bank loan officers) should be outlawed, though as with many "subtler" forms of injustice, these violations may be functionally unprosecutable. Other countries have begun to start initiatives that integrate the SLC-E, such as specialized learning programs for identified polymaths and membership of "hazardous" SLC-E for the rescue and emergency services.
- Other countries with lower GDP and poorer infrastructure have simply not seen fit to expend the necessary resources to create an enforcement system.
- Despite the availability of enforcement infrastructure, Germany represents the clearest defiance from EUSR enforcement trends no doubt due to the socio-historical weight of the Holocaust.
| EUSR Compliance Ratings (abridged) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| High | Moderate | Low | Pending |
| Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom | Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden | Bulgaria, Canada*, Cypress, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta | South Africa |
* Historical regulatory exemptions
In general, governments within the EU have refused to comment in official capacity when asked if "dangerous" SLC-E have been in use in para/military operations prior to 2009, or knowledge about the existence of such abilities at all.
Discrimination
Aside from EUSR enforcement, rates of hate crime, terrorist violence, other discrimination against SLC-Expressive individuals continue to rise throughout the European Union. Furthermore, the exploitation of unique SLC-E abilities has also been said to yield a "new era of slavery," which has implications that rival the ongoing problem of sex trafficking, which has also yet to see improvement despite advocacy efforts of the recent decade. Proponents of the EUSR have nonetheless argued these patterns are the same outside of the Union, and experienced even in countries where Registration is not mandatory or managed differently. Notably, SLC-E individuals who are financially more privileged, white, Christian, etc. have generally faced less harassment and interference.
In general, SLC-E regardless of registration status have begun to demonstrate unwillingness to report crimes even when they are the victim.
Travel
Transit by railway and air remains one of the most powerful advantages to living in the EU, both to tourism and the everyday economy enjoyed by citizens. Cost of travel is relatively low, and in general, it is convenient to move between EU countries for any purpose including leisure.
However, the UK in particular has begun to institute random EUSR status checks and SLC-E testing at points of transit since early 2019. UK legislators have threatened to create bureaucratic inconveniences for fellow EU states that do not expend the necessary resources and make the changes to comply fully with the EUSR and the "spirit" with which it was allegedly written. These are issues that are expected to come to attention as the European Commission continues to convene and refine laws involving the regulation of SLC-Expressive individuals in the coming years.
In 2016, the Eurostar upgraded to the next generation of bullet trains and expanded to include more territory. The system currently connects the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and northern Italy. It continues to share some of this mileage with regional transit companies.