
Hungary No Longer a Democracy – Freedom House - goose847
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/06/hungary-no-longer-a-democracy-report-239807
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mullen
Expel them from the EU and NATO. Europe must take a hardline on this or other
countries will follow Poland and Hungry's path.

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favorited
It takes a unanimous vote to admit or expel a country (minus one in the case
of expelling), IIUC. The EU couldn't kick Hungary out because Poland wouldn't
support it.

It's the same reason a theoretical independent Scotland wouldn't be admitted –
there's no way that Spain would want precedent set that a country can split
off and then rejoin the EU.

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eli_gottlieb
So the more corrupt and undemocratic the European Union gets, the more
constrained the remaining democratic members are from acting on it?

Who came up with _that_ structure?

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avmich
> Who came up with that structure?

Inherent complexity.

You see, it's hard to know in advance all consequences of today's decisions. A
person or a political body may have all good intentions, yet with time
passing, rules which seems unambiguous and good suddenly are viewed in another
light. Many rules can be applied technically correctly, but contrary to the
ideas there were when the rules were created.

Sometimes the consequences are seen - there's just no way to avoid them, short
of skipping the rulemaking. Sometimes they are not. It seems like legislation,
while on the surface similar to software making - only for humans, not
computers - in reality works with critically different constraints. That is,
computers are relatively easy modeled as systems with clear set of states,
while human societies are not.

One may play with the idea to require to attach to every law at the moment of
enacting an informal, but complete, as it is feasible, explanation for why the
law is created, what its intent and limitations. This will probably won't
always work; it may shift problems elsewhere with application - interpretation
- of laws though.

Coming back to your question - do you see this scenario you described as
visible and deserving attention at the time EU rules were made?

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jdsully
Considering Spain was not a democracy until 1975 and the first EU parliament
election was in 1979, I'd say the possibility of an undemocratic state in
Europe was not unforeseeable at the time of its formation.

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pvaldes
> Considering Spain was not a democracy until 1975

History of Spain reports more than fifty general elections before this date,
starting at 1810. Is a fact well documented and impossible to ignore, unless
you want to rewrite the history of the country in the last 200 years for some
reason. The universal concept of democracy, of course, has changed with time
but this was not exclusive from Spain.

[https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Elecciones_en_Espa%C3%B1...](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Elecciones_en_Espa%C3%B1a#Cortes_de_C%C3%A1diz_\(1810_-_1814\))

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jdsully
So we’re just going to gloss over the 36 year Franco dictatorship?

During the 1800s most of europe was under some form of monarchy or dictatorial
rule. Its not a relevant timeframe for this discussion.

