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Haha, what EU are you talking about? When did you vote for Juncker or anyone else on the commission? The commission where all the power of the EU is concentrat

Haha, what EU are you talking about? When did you vote for Juncker or anyone else on the commission? The commission where all the power of the EU is concentrated? It's got better than when it was at its worst, but the EU is still incredibly undemocratic and unaccountable for a Western institution. And let's not even start on how Germany suddenly seem to be in control of the Euro and seem to be essentially dictating monetary policy in Greece, Italy and Spain.

toyg 10y ago
> When did you vote for Juncker Juncker was the PPE candidate before the last round of EU elections. A majority of EU citizens voted PPE-member parties, so Juncker was elected Commission President. That's democracy in my book. All major European parties had a CP candidate going in the election, although only two had a realistic shot (Juncker for PPE and Martin Schulz for PSE); if you voted for Labour in UK, you voted for Schulz -- who is now President of the European Parliament btw, following a common European convention where opposition leaders are given oversight roles. That's real democracy in action IMHO. > commission where all the power of the EU is concentrated Was concentrated, pre-2009. The Commission now sets the legislative agenda, but Parliament has final say including veto. > the EU is still incredibly undemocratic and unaccountable Considering the institutions typically taking flak (Commission and Council) are direct emanation of national governments, I'd say the responsibility for that sits directly with national governments and their voters. Besides, if you don't like the fact that you "didn't vote for Juncker", you should be happy that Commission and Council will always include a representation from your country, no matter what anyone votes for, and it's usually on the topic that is of most interest to your country. > Germany suddenly seem to be in control of the Euro That's the real problem (which doesn't really affect the UK, but certainly the EU as a whole suffers from it). Everything else is a detail.
jankor 10y ago
Juncker was a leader of the party that won European Parliament elections. The rest of the commission is appointed by the elected Parliament as well. Let's compare this to let's say House of Lords. Germany was the main opponent of lowering the interest rate to 0 and launching QE, they obviously failed, no Germany is not suddenly in control of the Euro. I am myself not a big proponent of the EU, but let's keep criticism where it's due and don't raise conspiracies about sudden german control of the Euro.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "Let's compare this to let's say House of Lords." Yes, lets. For the most part, the role of the House of Lords is to refine the work that is done by the House of Commons. In other words, they act as an advisory body. It's the House of Commons that makes the decisions on what laws to propose, that sets the political direction for the country. The House of Lords proposes no laws themselves, and aside from exceptional circumstances they cannot block legislation that is proposed by the House of Commons. Compare that to the EU. The European Parliament, where the bulk of the elected representatives sit, cannot propose new laws, they can only refine what gets proposed by the European Commission. In other words, it's the inverse of the UK system.
  - lispm 10y ago
    http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/20150201PVL00004/Legislative-powers http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/20150201PVL...
rjsw 10y ago
Junker was the candidate for President of the Commission of the grouping of parties on the right at the last Euro election, Martin Schulz the candidate of the parties on the left. If you voted for a UK MEP then you had an input to this choice.
Xylakant 10y ago
I voted in my last general election for my government which sends its representative to the commission. Like you either did or did not. Granted, there is definitely room for improvement when it comes to electoral representation in the EU, but it's not as if the EU with all its institutions is a random occurrence born from technocrats who decided that well, let's form a european dictatorship council. There's also progress being made: The EU parliament by now has some actual power instead of being a debate council. (Side note: I always consider the "EU is undemocratic because of the appointed council" argument a bit hilarious coming from the British with the appointed House of Lords.)
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "sends its representative to the commission" That's where you've misunderstood. The commissioners are not the representatives of those that nominate them. They are expressly forbidden from taking instructions from their national government. Don't believe me? Watch this, it's from the European Commission's YouTube channel... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWpgO1EPO_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWpgO1EPO_Y As for the wider point about the EU being democratic, perhaps you should take some time to listen to someone who has been directly involved with the EU. Here's an excerpt from a talk involving Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky... https://youtu.be/2WG-uEND74E?t=1h16m37s https://youtu.be/2WG-uEND74E?t=1h16m37s "Q: Hello. My question is for Mr. Chomsky. In the past you’ve been very critical of the way in which the West has engaged in political and economic imperialism around the world behind closed doors, kind of smoke and mirrors. How do you believe that transparency and democratizing the Eurozone— NOAM CHOMSKY: And democratizing the Eurozone. Q: How it will kind of affect or possibly deter this behavior? NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, actually one of the things that Yanis discusses in his book is that the Eurozone—in the Eurozone, democracy has declined arguably even faster than it has in the United States. During this past generation of neoliberal policies there has been a global assault on democracy, that’s kind of inherent in the principles. And in the Eurozone it’s reached a remarkable level. I mean, even the Wall Street Journal, hardly a critical rag, pointed out that no matter who gets elected in a European country, whether it’s communist, fascist, anybody else, the policies remain the same. And the reason is they’re all set in Brussels, by the bureaucracy, and the citizens of the national states have no role in this, and when they try to have a role, as in the Greek referendum, they get smashed down. That’s a rare step. Mostly they are sitting by passively as victims of policies over which they have nothing to say, and what Yanis said about the Eurogroup is quite striking. This is a completely unelected work group. Not in any remote way related to citizens’ decisions, but it’s basically making the decisions, the choices and decisions. That’s even beyond what happens here. Here it’s bad enough, but that’s more extreme. YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Let me add to this just to clarify something. Actually I will go further than Noam about Europe. The European Union doesn’t suffer or the Eurogroup from a democratic deficit. It’s like saying that we are on the moon and there is an oxygen deficit. There is no oxygen deficit on the moon. There is no oxygen, full stop. And this is official in Europe. At my first Eurogroup, as the rookie around, I was given the floor to set out our policies and to introduce myself, which is nice, and I gave the most moderate speech that I thought it was humanly possible to make. I said, “I know that you are annoyed I’m here. Your favorite guy didn’t get elected, I got elected, I’m here, but I’m here in order to work with you, to find common ground, there is a failed program that you want to keep insisting on implementing in Greece, we have our mandate, let’s sit down and find common ground.” I thought that was a pretty moderate thing to say. They didn’t. And then after me, after I had expounded the principle of continuity and the principle of democracy, and the idea of having some compromise between the two, Doctor Wolfgang Schäuble puts his name tag forward and demands the floor and he comes up with a magnificent statement, verbatim I’m going to give you what he said, “Elections cannot be allowed to change the economic policies of any country.” At which point I intervened and said, “this is the greatest gift to the Communist Party of China, because they believe that too.”'
lispm 10y ago
> And let's not even start on how Germany suddenly seem to be in control of the Euro and seem to be essentially dictating monetary policy in Greece, Italy and Spain. That's a very simplistic view. If Germany would actually control the Euro, the ECB (European Central Bank) monetary policy would look quite a bit different. Greece didn't protest when they took the money. They protested when they had to pay it back and called that 'undemocratic'.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > " They protested when they had to pay it back" They protested when they couldn't pay it back. Furthermore, you do realise that the Greek bailout was just a bank bailout in disguise, right? http://www.dw.com/en/most-of-greek-bailout-money-went-to-banks-study/a-19234391 http://www.dw.com/en/most-of-greek-bailout-money-went-to-ban... "Since the Greek debt crisis began in 2010, the southern European country has received two bailouts from international creditors and is currently on its third. During the first two "adjustment programs," as they're known in bureaucratic parlance, Athens received some 216 billion euros. Of that amount, the ESMT's study found that 86.9 billion went toward debt repayments, including 9.1 billion in repayments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 52.3 billion was spent on interest payments, 37.3 billion was used for bank recapitalization and 29.7 billion was doled out to provide incentives for investors to get involved in the private sector. Only 9.7 billion euros, according to ESMT, was directly contributed to Greece's fiscal budget or to kickstart the Greek economy."
  - lispm 10y ago
    > They protested when they couldn't pay it back. What I said, they didn't protest when Greece took that money. That the money given to them was for paying back the debt of Greece against banks is nothing new. The problem of Greece at that time was not to 'kickstart the Greek economy'. They needed money to survive the weeks and days.
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      How exactly was it 'needed money to survive the weeks and days' when the vast majority of it went to foreign banks?

toyg 10y ago

> When did you vote for Juncker Juncker was the PPE candidate before the last round of EU elections. A majority of EU citizens voted PPE-member parties, so Juncker was elected Commission President. That's democracy in my book. All major European parties had a CP candidate going in the election, although only two had a realistic shot (Juncker for PPE and Martin Schulz for PSE); if you voted for Labour in UK, you voted for Schulz -- who is now President of the European Parliament btw, following a common European convention where opposition leaders are given oversight roles. That's real democracy in action IMHO. > commission where all the power of the EU is concentrated Was concentrated, pre-2009. The Commission now sets the legislative agenda, but Parliament has final say including veto. > the EU is still incredibly undemocratic and unaccountable Considering the institutions typically taking flak (Commission and Council) are direct emanation of national governments, I'd say the responsibility for that sits directly with national governments and their voters. Besides, if you don't like the fact that you "didn't vote for Juncker", you should be happy that Commission and Council will always include a representation from your country, no matter what anyone votes for, and it's usually on the topic that is of most interest to your country. > Germany suddenly seem to be in control of the Euro That's the real problem (which doesn't really affect the UK, but certainly the EU as a whole suffers from it). Everything else is a detail.

jankor 10y ago

Juncker was a leader of the party that won European Parliament elections. The rest of the commission is appointed by the elected Parliament as well. Let's compare this to let's say House of Lords. Germany was the main opponent of lowering the interest rate to 0 and launching QE, they obviously failed, no Germany is not suddenly in control of the Euro. I am myself not a big proponent of the EU, but let's keep criticism where it's due and don't raise conspiracies about sudden german control of the Euro.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "Let's compare this to let's say House of Lords." Yes, lets. For the most part, the role of the House of Lords is to refine the work that is done by the House of Commons. In other words, they act as an advisory body. It's the House of Commons that makes the decisions on what laws to propose, that sets the political direction for the country. The House of Lords proposes no laws themselves, and aside from exceptional circumstances they cannot block legislation that is proposed by the House of Commons. Compare that to the EU. The European Parliament, where the bulk of the elected representatives sit, cannot propose new laws, they can only refine what gets proposed by the European Commission. In other words, it's the inverse of the UK system.
- lispm 10y ago
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/20150201PVL00004/Legislative-powers http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/20150201PVL...

rjsw 10y ago

Junker was the candidate for President of the Commission of the grouping of parties on the right at the last Euro election, Martin Schulz the candidate of the parties on the left. If you voted for a UK MEP then you had an input to this choice.

Xylakant 10y ago

I voted in my last general election for my government which sends its representative to the commission. Like you either did or did not. Granted, there is definitely room for improvement when it comes to electoral representation in the EU, but it's not as if the EU with all its institutions is a random occurrence born from technocrats who decided that well, let's form a european dictatorship council. There's also progress being made: The EU parliament by now has some actual power instead of being a debate council. (Side note: I always consider the "EU is undemocratic because of the appointed council" argument a bit hilarious coming from the British with the appointed House of Lords.)

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "sends its representative to the commission" That's where you've misunderstood. The commissioners are not the representatives of those that nominate them. They are expressly forbidden from taking instructions from their national government. Don't believe me? Watch this, it's from the European Commission's YouTube channel... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWpgO1EPO_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWpgO1EPO_Y As for the wider point about the EU being democratic, perhaps you should take some time to listen to someone who has been directly involved with the EU. Here's an excerpt from a talk involving Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky... https://youtu.be/2WG-uEND74E?t=1h16m37s https://youtu.be/2WG-uEND74E?t=1h16m37s "Q: Hello. My question is for Mr. Chomsky. In the past you’ve been very critical of the way in which the West has engaged in political and economic imperialism around the world behind closed doors, kind of smoke and mirrors. How do you believe that transparency and democratizing the Eurozone— NOAM CHOMSKY: And democratizing the Eurozone. Q: How it will kind of affect or possibly deter this behavior? NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, actually one of the things that Yanis discusses in his book is that the Eurozone—in the Eurozone, democracy has declined arguably even faster than it has in the United States. During this past generation of neoliberal policies there has been a global assault on democracy, that’s kind of inherent in the principles. And in the Eurozone it’s reached a remarkable level. I mean, even the Wall Street Journal, hardly a critical rag, pointed out that no matter who gets elected in a European country, whether it’s communist, fascist, anybody else, the policies remain the same. And the reason is they’re all set in Brussels, by the bureaucracy, and the citizens of the national states have no role in this, and when they try to have a role, as in the Greek referendum, they get smashed down. That’s a rare step. Mostly they are sitting by passively as victims of policies over which they have nothing to say, and what Yanis said about the Eurogroup is quite striking. This is a completely unelected work group. Not in any remote way related to citizens’ decisions, but it’s basically making the decisions, the choices and decisions. That’s even beyond what happens here. Here it’s bad enough, but that’s more extreme. YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Let me add to this just to clarify something. Actually I will go further than Noam about Europe. The European Union doesn’t suffer or the Eurogroup from a democratic deficit. It’s like saying that we are on the moon and there is an oxygen deficit. There is no oxygen deficit on the moon. There is no oxygen, full stop. And this is official in Europe. At my first Eurogroup, as the rookie around, I was given the floor to set out our policies and to introduce myself, which is nice, and I gave the most moderate speech that I thought it was humanly possible to make. I said, “I know that you are annoyed I’m here. Your favorite guy didn’t get elected, I got elected, I’m here, but I’m here in order to work with you, to find common ground, there is a failed program that you want to keep insisting on implementing in Greece, we have our mandate, let’s sit down and find common ground.” I thought that was a pretty moderate thing to say. They didn’t. And then after me, after I had expounded the principle of continuity and the principle of democracy, and the idea of having some compromise between the two, Doctor Wolfgang Schäuble puts his name tag forward and demands the floor and he comes up with a magnificent statement, verbatim I’m going to give you what he said, “Elections cannot be allowed to change the economic policies of any country.” At which point I intervened and said, “this is the greatest gift to the Communist Party of China, because they believe that too.”'

lispm 10y ago

> And let's not even start on how Germany suddenly seem to be in control of the Euro and seem to be essentially dictating monetary policy in Greece, Italy and Spain. That's a very simplistic view. If Germany would actually control the Euro, the ECB (European Central Bank) monetary policy would look quite a bit different. Greece didn't protest when they took the money. They protested when they had to pay it back and called that 'undemocratic'.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> " They protested when they had to pay it back" They protested when they couldn't pay it back. Furthermore, you do realise that the Greek bailout was just a bank bailout in disguise, right? http://www.dw.com/en/most-of-greek-bailout-money-went-to-banks-study/a-19234391 http://www.dw.com/en/most-of-greek-bailout-money-went-to-ban... "Since the Greek debt crisis began in 2010, the southern European country has received two bailouts from international creditors and is currently on its third. During the first two "adjustment programs," as they're known in bureaucratic parlance, Athens received some 216 billion euros. Of that amount, the ESMT's study found that 86.9 billion went toward debt repayments, including 9.1 billion in repayments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 52.3 billion was spent on interest payments, 37.3 billion was used for bank recapitalization and 29.7 billion was doled out to provide incentives for investors to get involved in the private sector. Only 9.7 billion euros, according to ESMT, was directly contributed to Greece's fiscal budget or to kickstart the Greek economy."
- lispm 10y ago
  > They protested when they couldn't pay it back. What I said, they didn't protest when Greece took that money. That the money given to them was for paying back the debt of Greece against banks is nothing new. The problem of Greece at that time was not to 'kickstart the Greek economy'. They needed money to survive the weeks and days.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    How exactly was it 'needed money to survive the weeks and days' when the vast majority of it went to foreign banks?