In France the most Euro skeptic party is the far right so where does that leave us?

There is no "pirate party" in France? I've found them to be the only privacy minded parties these days sadly.

Only euro skeptic parties are against this sort of bill?

the best way to change the EU is to not leave it

I am not sure I follow. I was talking about electing MPs who are most capable of voting down laws.

It turns out that in France the MPs who could do that are from the far right and that is why I asked the question above.

as I understand it, euro-sceptic means wanting to leave the EU. I'm thinking that if you want someone to vote down unreasonable laws, then you should vote for who seems the most reasonable

When I wrote to the various U.K. MEPs in 2018 regarding the (awful) proposed EU Copyright Directive, the only ones that intended to vote against it were the Euro-skeptics and the Greens.

I was impressed at how the Euro-skeptic MEPs understood my concerns and took the time to write back to me in detail. They seemed by far the most democratically engaged of all the MEPs I communicated with

Make of that what you will.

EP have power to reject or amend these laws and cannot be bypassed.

They have the power to send a proposed law back to the commission, to be revised. The commission has the power to send it back to parliament unrevised.

I think the Council of Ministers also comes into the process. The Council consists of the national government ministers whose purview includes the matter at hand; it's membership changes for each meeting. It's really just all the member governments of the EU, one nation one council-member.

> to send it back to parliament unrevised

No, once a proposal is made the commission can withdraw it but not amend it anymore

After the proposal is made parliament and the council shuttle back and forth (between each other) proposed changes for up to 3 times (I might be wrong on the exact number)

If the proposal doesn't pass by then (or is withdrawn) it fails

and to be clear - the Council of Ministers has primacy, the actual power in the EU, whereas the Commission is just the secretariat or Civil Service of the EU, they have no power to decide policy.

I'd like to understand this better. Is the EU parliament incapable of blocking this bill?

The european parliament can vote the bill down. But that's the last line of defense. The danger is that a lot of politicians will think that it's for the benefit of children (which is nonsense) and will therefore vote in favor of the law.

Right now it is actually the council of the EU that is preventing the law from progressing.

The "nearly powerless" refers to blocking the bill being the only thing the parliament is able to do. The commission can just keep proposing this bill, it only needs to pass the parliament once. Once passed, future parliaments are unable to amend or repeal the bill. The commission only has to win once, while the parliament has to block the bill every single time.

The commission isn't an extraneous entity, if the parliament and member states want a law or amendment the commission will write a proposal. It doesn't "have to" strictly speaking but it would.

Framing it like you do is ignoring the fact that the only reason we're here in the first place is because a good chunk of member states and MEPs want this law