This is a good illustration of EU legislative structure:
> The legislation was voted through by a majority of EU ministers just a few minutes ago, despite opposition from Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, and Sweden.
> Francovich v Italy (1991) C-6/90 was a decision of the European Court of Justice which established that European Union member states could be liable to pay compensation to individuals who suffered a loss by reason of the member state's failure to transpose an EU directive into national law. This principle is sometimes known as the principle of state liability or "the rule in Francovich" in European Union law.
Indeed, EU members lack the sovereignty even of U.S. states. The US federal government can pass laws directly binding on the citizens of every state, but cannot compel state governments to pass and enforce particular laws. The EU can do both (the former through regulations, the latter through directives). In the US, the inability of the federal government to hijack state legislative and enforcement machinery to its own ends is seen as an important measure of accountability—you can always blame state legislators for state laws. (You see this in the areas of drug and immigration law. Sanctuary cities can exist because the federal government cannot force state organs to enforce federal law. Likewise, legalized marijuana at the state level.)
Well, it's more like an illustration of a voting/decision group where majority, but not unanimity, is required for the decision to be taken. And where the decision taken is binding for everyone.
The mechanism in question was and is known by all participant countries that joined the EU.
Not perfect, but is there a better system at reach?
There's a country I heard, overseas, where it can happen that someone is elected president although they didn't get the majority of the people's vote.
> The mechanism in question was and is known by all participant countries that joined the EU.
That is just not true. The mechanism was changed drastically by Lisbon treaty - no more vetos, qualified majority now overrules the rest. Needless to say, 'no' was not accepted as an answer to European Constitution/Lisbon treaty, as reminded by referendums in France, Netherlands and Ireland. This is the true nature of the EU.
The referendums were a disgrace, true.
So were they because referendums are often organised, and seen, and used, as votes of confidence for a given government, and not as expressions for the very question.
Find any country, political structure that is pure, of anything.
But still. Here we are. More than 70 years at peace on a continent, something not seen for several centuries before that. The EU project, and structure, and growth, and maturity, is central to that peace.
How factually worse, exactly, have been any EU member, since they joined the Union? How factually better have they been as well?
Pretending that EU members would be better off without the union is a plain, undocumented, geopolitically hostile, lie.
That's got to be an object lesson in blinkered dogma.
> So were they because referendums are often organised, and seen, and used, as votes of confidence for a given government
From the grab-bag of possible explanations...
> But still. Here we are. More than 70 years at peace on a continent
Also an amazing co-incidence that NATO has been in existence for 70 years. Containing three nuclear powers, it doesn't take a leap of imagination that it was a greater deterrent than whatever you had in mind.
How has your version worked over 70 years? The EU has only been in existence since 1994. Prior to that, it existed in a smaller, trade-only form as the EEC. I thought the 'butter mountain' and 'wine lake' were figures of speech. So were they physical defences, something like an obstacle course to deter the Russians? /s
Do you think the states of the United States would be better off as individual states with a pure economic and military agreement (i.e NATO + a kind of EEC) ?
I think most people would be at least be happier under that arrangement. We burn enormous amounts of time in the US fighting with each other over basic differences in culture and attitude, and the resulting compromises satisfy no one.
> More than 70 years at peace on a continent, something not seen for several centuries before that. The EU project, and structure, and growth, and maturity, is central to that peace.
I don't really buy that. There were a number of years of peace before the EU even existed; crediting the EU with the peace therefore seems a bit revisionist.
What about Yugoslavia and Ukraine? Also calling the cold war "peace" is a bit stretch.
Edit: additionally just because countries are "better off" does not mean they should happily agree to every new power grab by Brussels. Some ex-soviet republics were also better off than before they "joined".
What are you talking about? Yugoslavia and Ukraine are not part of the EU and they are not that well off either. What ex-soviet republics were better off before they joined the EU? Most of them were still recovering from communism.
As soon as the EU falls apart you will see everyone feeling cheated or oppressed by its neighbour for all kind of reasons not to mention territorial reclaims. War will be inevitable. The big powers will profit most(Russia, China and the US).
The parent said "peace on the continent". Last I checked, Ukraine and Yugoslavia are part of Europe.
For "better off" - apologies for being unclear - I didn't mean joining the EU. I was making the comparison that the same was true for countries that were (forcefully) joined into the Soviet union in mid 20th century.
Setting aside what will surely be a torrent of what-abouts, the parent's point about the US federal (lack-of-)authority seems like an example of a better system.
(First what-about: the election system is related to but distinct from the ability of the Federal gov to force state-level laws)
> The US federal government can pass laws directly binding on the citizens of every state, but cannot compel state governments to pass and enforce particular laws.
Only in theory.
See the National Minimum Drinking Age Act[0] for an example of when the Federal Government forced states to enforce a age 21 drinking minimum. When an entity controls the purse strings limits on their power are largely theoretical.
The National Minimum Drinking Age Act didn't "force states" to do anything. It provided that the federal government would withhold 10% of highway funds if states did not enact a drinking age of 21--it had to use a carrot/stick approach precisely because the federal government could not directly compel states to legislate.
That distinction, moreover, is not "theoretical"--it is a limit on federal power that has real teeth. In NFIB v. Sebelius, a majority of the Supreme Court (7-2, on that point) held that ACA's Medicaid expansion was "unconstitutionally coercive" because it would allow the federal government to withdraw all of a state's Medicaid funding if the state did not expand Medicaid eligibility under state law.
Gay marriage, drugs, and immigration are other significant areas where states have used their prerogatives to depart from and refuse to enforce federal law.
I feel like "you're free to leave" is not a good response to most issues with government and member states. It misses the point of the question if the law or structure in question is appropriate.
I get what you mean by a difference between a US state and the EU... but that difference doesn't address the issue.
> The legislation was voted through by a majority of EU ministers just a few minutes ago, despite opposition from Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, and Sweden.
Nonetheless, those countries will have no choice but to implement national laws to comply with the EU directive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francovich_v_Italy
> Francovich v Italy (1991) C-6/90 was a decision of the European Court of Justice which established that European Union member states could be liable to pay compensation to individuals who suffered a loss by reason of the member state's failure to transpose an EU directive into national law. This principle is sometimes known as the principle of state liability or "the rule in Francovich" in European Union law.
Indeed, EU members lack the sovereignty even of U.S. states. The US federal government can pass laws directly binding on the citizens of every state, but cannot compel state governments to pass and enforce particular laws. The EU can do both (the former through regulations, the latter through directives). In the US, the inability of the federal government to hijack state legislative and enforcement machinery to its own ends is seen as an important measure of accountability—you can always blame state legislators for state laws. (You see this in the areas of drug and immigration law. Sanctuary cities can exist because the federal government cannot force state organs to enforce federal law. Likewise, legalized marijuana at the state level.)