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Yes Legen is a bit like an EU prime minister, but she doesn't have the same prerogatives. The EU has the ultimate authority only on a narrow number of economic
by estaseuropano 6y ago
Yes Legen is a bit like an EU prime minister, but she doesn't have the same prerogatives. The EU has the ultimate authority only on a narrow number of economic issues, but e.g. on borders and health it needs to get the agreement of 27 goverents to act.
The EU is a compromise machine designed to manage the expectations and needs of 27 countries, not a presidential system where a Trump or Putin can sign executive decisions changing laws with the stroke of a pen. So Johnson or Trump as heads of the commission would likely manage to do better publicity-wise but I doubt they could get much faster results.
- thu2111 6y agoThat's incorrect. The EU is a presidential system where the head of the Commission (vDL) can and just did change laws at the stroke of a pen. She has far more power than Trump because Trump could be blocked by Congress and Congress can make its own laws to which Trump is subservient. The EU Commission is the ultimate source of all EU law, with the Parliament being not actually a parliament at all (it can't change the law!). An example of the EU changing the law on a whim was the regulations just published on Friday that imposed a border on Northern Ireland, the thing they just spent the last 4 years claiming would be terrible and provoke terrorist violence which is why the UK would have to basically 'lose' NI as territory. It could happen without Ireland or the UK even being consulted exactly because the EU is constitutionally a dictatorship of the Commission.