the European Parliament (here the body making a decision) is the EU institution that supposedly does not have the "democratic deficit", they are elected by the citizens. So in what way is this different from what we expect in democracies?
Well, first of all I have yet to hear about this vote from any of my local news sources. If I didn't browse hackernews I likely wouldn't know about it.
Secondly I don't recall voting for any MEPs, as far as I can tell it's similarly not reported on. Besides given the lack of news about what any of the parties are up to it's hard to say anything about who you should even vote for.
Thirdly just because somewhere at the end a vaguely democratically elected group of people get to make a decision about it that doesn't somehow absolve the rest of the process from being undemocratic and seemingly driven by corporate interests. The biggest problem being that the decisions on what should be voted on and how seem to be mostly taken by an unelected group of people, who will evidently (given the way Selmayr was promoted) vote for anything if it gets them better pay and pensions.
I won't deny that the local press is at fault, however it's too simple to just blame them and release the EU from any responsibility. You can't have a democracy without public oversight, so if it's lacking then blaming other people for it isn't particularly persuasive. As it is the EU seems perfectly happy to keep things this way.
Actually this proposal was a commission proposal, so the democratic deficit here is that this proposal could have gone through, EVEN IF it was voted out.
So that's one, in my opinion very big problem.
Second, people are just not aware of what power the EU has. And the politicians I speak to actually see this as an advantage. One told me specifically that without power like this we would still have the insanity of driving on the left of the road in Norway, or would still have the separate currencies (which of course, would also have prevented a lot of problems in Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal, and provided better lives for probably 100 million (!) people).
So that's the second part. Nobody cares about the EU, because there is no unity. Europeans don't feel part of Europe. They feel they're part of France, Belgium, UK, but not of Europe. So they don't care. There is little to no local presence of any EU agency.
> Actually this proposal was a commission proposal, so the democratic deficit here is that this proposal could have gone through, EVEN IF it was voted out.
No! If the parliament had rejected the proposal, then the "ball" would have come back to the Commission, which would have had to amend their proposal, pass it through the Council again, and if successful, returned it to the Parliament, which would be again given the choice of rejecting or passing the amended proposal. (This is similar to what happens in other entities/countries with bicameral legislatives — e.g. the US senate vs. the House of Representatives.) Importantly, without the EU Parliament's approval, the proposal could never become law.
Now, granted the situation is more complex than just that the commission can push through whatever it wants, but the following statements are true:
1) the commission can block whatever it wants (ie. it has a monopoly on legislative initiative). So it has a negative veto, and can prevent (and does prevent) anything it wants.
2) the commission can, in cooperation with the EU council, create and adopt legislation, without anything more than getting the Parliament's position (but not approval) [1]
3) they can even use other procedures to get what they want [2]
In practice the commission and council requiring each other is essentially the commission doing what it wants because it's mostly the same people, and even when not, they're necessarily from the same country and party (well, everyone in one has a counterpart in the other that's from the same country and party).
So no. The EU is a dictatorship. The commission has the only lawgiving power, and can block anyone else's initiative. The parliament ... is better paid but no more powerful than my cat ... (plus the politicians in there couldn't organize their way out of a paper bag whereas my cat has claws).
(and let's ignore the fact that the commission also controls the EU court of justice)
> Well, first of all I have yet to hear about this vote from any of my local news sources. If I didn't browse hackernews I likely wouldn't know about it.
Where do you live if I may ask? here in austria it was everywhere before the vote and now new articles with the result.
1) You could argue whether the EU Parliament has democracy deficits or not. I assume it has (based on the legislation process itself with involvement of the Committee, but also based upon unequally weighted votes of citizens from different countries).
2) However, the most important point is that this law is considered as a "techie niche" by the vast majority of citizens. Also, EU topics as such suffer from a very narrow attention in the general public. Having said this, it is far easier for lobbyists to place such an initiative "under the radar" than it would be to lobby in 28 countries. In techie speak, a centralized entity like the EU is more or less a single point of failure for the unavoidable "bugs" of a democracy.
Isn't this the same attitude as "it's the user's fault if they click OK" on shrink-wrap legalese, repetitive security prompts, and the like?
People are constantly overwhelmed with choices, and eventually they start to economize on their decision-making to focus on immediate needs. Certain systems (particularly those designed by marketers and politicians) are set up to take advantage of this trait.
