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The EU parliament is not nearly as toothless as you make it out to be. It _can_ block and amend directives such as the one we are talking about. And you _can_ vote out your MEP at the next election.

You can also vote out your representative in the EU Council (and the council of ministers) because the UK member of the council also has to be a UK MP.

So the power in the EU rests with directly elected politicians and with the Commission, which is appointed/approved/dismissed by directly elected politicians. The Commission alone cannot pass laws.

In some countries, neither the prime minister nor cabinet ministers have to be elected politicians (unlike in the UK). This additional level of indirection obviously extends to the members of the EU council from these countries, but that is a function of national constitutions.




It’s interesting because the exact opposite argument was used to justify the direct election of US Senators. It used to be that the Senate represented the interests of states, elected by state governments. But then someone had the idea that the US Senate should represent individuals rather than the states (despite the existence of the House of Represenatives which was created for representation of individuals.)

Of course you can vote out your MP, however there is a calculus at play: your MP might be great at the local issues, but then they may support a European rep that is not as good. It would be much better if the EU were directly accountable to the people upon whom they inflict their decrees.


We do have direct accountability through the European Parliament, and the MPs I was talking about (the members of the EU Council) are the Prime Minister and the cabinet ministers. I have to assume that they are capable of thinking a bit beyond their local constituency issues.

But I actually think that none of these technicalities matter that much. What's missing in the EU democratic process is an EU wide platform for debate, a platform for campaigning on EU wide issues.

This is made more difficult by the fact that we speak so many different languages and that English proficiency is very unevenly distributed among the economic classes (and among countries).

I think what could spark EU wide political debates and allow campaigners to create real political pressure on an EU level would be a directly elected EU president. A face that you can properly hate and blame and really really want to kick out of office :)

I am very much in favour of the United States of Europe, modelled after the USA.


> A face that you can properly hate and blame and really really want to kick out of office :)

More theater, and a punchbag to sacrifice, like Bush was for Cheney. No thanks!


> there is a calculus at play: your MP might be great at the local issues, but then they may support a European rep that is not as good.

This is the fundamental problem with representative 'democracy' in general (at least with regard to legislatures); representatives aren't and inherently can't be held accountable for more than one thing per election cycle.


The leadership of the European Union is fundamentally undemocratic - Junckers et al


Mr Juncker was elected by a majority of the European Council (comprising national heads of government) and the European Parliament (directly elected by the people).


So he was elected by a majority of the European Council. One of whom is the national head of government in my country. Who is there by virtue of being the leader of the party which had the most MPs in the last election, when factoring in an alliance with another party. And the MPs elected by a majority of votes in their constituencies, no matter how slim.

You can say "that's democracy", but it's so diluted it's almost homeopathic.


>So he was elected by a majority of the European Council

No. He needs a majority in both the Council _and_ the directly elected EU parliament. Nothing homeopathic about that.

Like in many democratic countries, the head of the EU executive body is not directly elected by the people.





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