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Ursula von der Leyen was not elected by EU citizens, and she makes decisions that many governemts of smaller EU countries simply copy/implement. Even before dea

Ursula von der Leyen was not elected by EU citizens, and she makes decisions that many governemts of smaller EU countries simply copy/implement. Even before deals with Pfizer there were many accusations of corruption, but I am not aware of any investigation. And I am not aware that many journalists are doing any research here. This is a huge problem.

pif 4y ago
- drno123 4y ago
  Nope. Live in Croatia and on referendum, I voted for my country to join EU.
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  One can discuss, critique, and even whine about structural flaws in their society without necessarily wanting to tear it all down around them.
- johnnymorgan 4y ago
  Let me guess: you had a brexiter strawman to throw out? EU is going to fail, it was never a good idea to begin with as it was dishonest from the start. Also European cultures are not unified in anyway from what I can tell, I seriously doubt the EU, as it stands today, will survive past 2030
  - baisq 4y ago
    >EU is going to fail, it was never a good idea to begin with as it was dishonest from the start. That's like saying that chemotherapy is not necessary because cancer is not a good idea to begin with. We need active action to end the EU. It's made of a clump of bureaucrats and oligarchs who are separated from the common rabble by several levels of people and who won't give up their seat ever.
- hardlianotion 4y ago
  That is a big guess from very sparse information.
synotna 4y ago
She was proposed by the European Council (made up of more or less democratically elected heads of state/government) and approved by the European Parliament (democratically elected representatives) That is as "elected" as many heads of government i.e. any prime minister system Directly electing presidents doesn't necessarily lead to better outcomes
- jansan 4y ago
  There were candidates nominated for the election and she wasn't of of them. Actually Manfred Weber was the elected candidate, but Merkel made sure that he did not get the job. The whole election was a farce and calling this democratic is quite a bold claim.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    Merkel was elected though, was she not? How is that not indirectly democratic then?
    - jansan 4y ago
      Sorry, but that is laughable. If there was a presidential election in the US with two candidates, and after the election the governor of California installed Weird Al Yankovic instead of the elected candidate as the new presdient, would you call it democratic simply because the governor of California was elected?
      - malermeister 4y ago
        If in the US instead of a president, all you could elect was party functionaries to an institution with the explicit purpose of being between the voters and the decision and they then voted somebody in as president against the popular vote, would you call that democratic? Because that's what happened in 2016 and many times before that. Glass House, stones, etc.
    - account42 4y ago
      Actually, Merkel was not elected by the poulace but rather her party was. You see, it's layers all the way down and with each layer democracy gets thinner and the opportunities for corruption get bigger.
wronglyprepaid 4y ago
> Ursula von der Leyen was not elected by EU citizens But was she not elected by EU members of parliment, who were elected by EU citizens? Every country I have ever lived in had a similar arrangement, I control who are elected to parliament, parliament votes for president, and the president serves at the pleasure of partliment. Not that this is an endorsement of the EU or Ursula von der Leyen, I'm not an EU citizen, don't live in an EU country, and don't care to live in one either. I think the main issue with EU is that it too much is decided at the EU level, but this to me is not related to it using a parliamentary system or Ursula not being elected directly by EU citizens, I think it is more related to what powers they can exercise.
- turbinerneiter 4y ago
  The point is the promised us something else. Many (of the interested) people in the EU are unhappy about some democratic shortcomings of the EU. The only directly elected body is the parliament and it is not very powerful. There is too little power at directly elected bodies and too much power at elements, that are far from the voters reach. At the last election they wanted to address that and promised that the lead candidate of the party with the most votes will be the commissioner. That didn't happen. Instead we got vdL, who was in trouble as Minister of Defense in Germany for some hiring consultants without proper process and for ... deleting messages from her phone. The whole situation is extremely painful for people like me, who support the EU. The tone-deafness, the disrespect for the voter. It is painful.
  - varispeed 4y ago
    This is exactly the issue why many people voted for Brexit. There was a feeling of disconnect between the people and the power. Now it may seem like a complete disaster, but we feel that our vote matters more now. It's a shame the EU has not addressed this and they don't seem to be doing it anytime soon. The most painful side effect of this is increasing corruption and lack of sense of responsibility among politicians. They feel like they can do whatever they want and there is extremely slim chance they get booted out or investigated.
tankenmate 4y ago
EU commissioners are appointed by member governments, in much the same way that civil servants are appointed by politicians. In most democracies there are three pillars of government, legislative, executive and judicial. Commissioners are a part of the executive. And here lies the difference, the amount of decision making power in the hands of executive vs the legislative, and whether the members of the executive need to be directly elected vs indirectly elected. You could also make the case that representative democracies aren't as good as direct democracies because citizens don't get to vote on laws directly. Obviously there are trade offs between having elected heads of the executive who are more directly accountable to the citizenry but have less subject matter knowledge vs indirectly elected executive who have somewhat less accountability but more knowledge. There is also the case of less corruption because the indirectly elected heads of the executive aren't as beholden to special interests. Which I personally feel is a huge benefit.
- mulvya 4y ago
  > There is also the case of less corruption because the indirectly elected heads of the executive aren't as beholden to special interests. Unless these heads of the executive need private sector jobs after their tenure.
  - tankenmate 4y ago
    This is true, but no more so than politicians.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  It's just yet another level removed from the voters. If representative democracy is imperfect, then having another level to represent the representatives is more imperfect still.
  - arrrg 4y ago
    I want the EU council to hand over many of its powers to the parliament and commission. (I’m fine with the parliament itself proposing and voting on the commission head, I’m not in favor of a directly elected head – but that’s just the German in me speaking where the federal government is set up exactly that way.) It‘s the national governments standing in the way of that, not the EU itself.
hilbert42 4y ago
Right, this accusation is serious enough that we must get to the bottom of it. For starters, we could examine the logs of all messages between Pfizer and the Commission. These logs are held by independent ISPs on both sides of the Atlantic and thus ought to be resistant to tampering.
- an9n 4y ago
  There is not a snowball's chance in hell that these texts are not archived on a server somewhere. So if we do not see them, it's because 'they' do not want us to see them.
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    Right, you're spot on! :-)
blibble 4y ago
> Ursula von der Leyen was not elected by EU citizens it's even worse than that prior to the election there was the usual stuff you'd expect: potential candidates begin interviewed by the press, television debates, where they would explain what they planned to do if they won, why their policy was the right one, etc then after the election all of those candidates were discarded and von der Leyen was appointed as commission president despite not being named prior or participating in the process of democratic scrutiny at all total farce
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
hef19898 4y ago
Maybe the missing messages are saved on the same thumb drive as Zensursula's SMS she sent during the German parliamentary investigations in the Defense Ministry's dealings with outside consultancies, when she happened to be the Defense Minister.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

pif 4y ago

drno123 4y ago
Nope. Live in Croatia and on referendum, I voted for my country to join EU.
InitialLastName 4y ago
One can discuss, critique, and even whine about structural flaws in their society without necessarily wanting to tear it all down around them.
johnnymorgan 4y ago
Let me guess: you had a brexiter strawman to throw out? EU is going to fail, it was never a good idea to begin with as it was dishonest from the start. Also European cultures are not unified in anyway from what I can tell, I seriously doubt the EU, as it stands today, will survive past 2030
- baisq 4y ago
  >EU is going to fail, it was never a good idea to begin with as it was dishonest from the start. That's like saying that chemotherapy is not necessary because cancer is not a good idea to begin with. We need active action to end the EU. It's made of a clump of bureaucrats and oligarchs who are separated from the common rabble by several levels of people and who won't give up their seat ever.
hardlianotion 4y ago
That is a big guess from very sparse information.

synotna 4y ago

She was proposed by the European Council (made up of more or less democratically elected heads of state/government) and approved by the European Parliament (democratically elected representatives) That is as "elected" as many heads of government i.e. any prime minister system Directly electing presidents doesn't necessarily lead to better outcomes

jansan 4y ago
There were candidates nominated for the election and she wasn't of of them. Actually Manfred Weber was the elected candidate, but Merkel made sure that he did not get the job. The whole election was a farce and calling this democratic is quite a bold claim.
- malermeister 4y ago
  Merkel was elected though, was she not? How is that not indirectly democratic then?
  - jansan 4y ago
    Sorry, but that is laughable. If there was a presidential election in the US with two candidates, and after the election the governor of California installed Weird Al Yankovic instead of the elected candidate as the new presdient, would you call it democratic simply because the governor of California was elected?
    - malermeister 4y ago
      If in the US instead of a president, all you could elect was party functionaries to an institution with the explicit purpose of being between the voters and the decision and they then voted somebody in as president against the popular vote, would you call that democratic? Because that's what happened in 2016 and many times before that. Glass House, stones, etc.
  - account42 4y ago
    Actually, Merkel was not elected by the poulace but rather her party was. You see, it's layers all the way down and with each layer democracy gets thinner and the opportunities for corruption get bigger.

wronglyprepaid 4y ago

> Ursula von der Leyen was not elected by EU citizens But was she not elected by EU members of parliment, who were elected by EU citizens? Every country I have ever lived in had a similar arrangement, I control who are elected to parliament, parliament votes for president, and the president serves at the pleasure of partliment. Not that this is an endorsement of the EU or Ursula von der Leyen, I'm not an EU citizen, don't live in an EU country, and don't care to live in one either. I think the main issue with EU is that it too much is decided at the EU level, but this to me is not related to it using a parliamentary system or Ursula not being elected directly by EU citizens, I think it is more related to what powers they can exercise.

turbinerneiter 4y ago
The point is the promised us something else. Many (of the interested) people in the EU are unhappy about some democratic shortcomings of the EU. The only directly elected body is the parliament and it is not very powerful. There is too little power at directly elected bodies and too much power at elements, that are far from the voters reach. At the last election they wanted to address that and promised that the lead candidate of the party with the most votes will be the commissioner. That didn't happen. Instead we got vdL, who was in trouble as Minister of Defense in Germany for some hiring consultants without proper process and for ... deleting messages from her phone. The whole situation is extremely painful for people like me, who support the EU. The tone-deafness, the disrespect for the voter. It is painful.
- varispeed 4y ago
  This is exactly the issue why many people voted for Brexit. There was a feeling of disconnect between the people and the power. Now it may seem like a complete disaster, but we feel that our vote matters more now. It's a shame the EU has not addressed this and they don't seem to be doing it anytime soon. The most painful side effect of this is increasing corruption and lack of sense of responsibility among politicians. They feel like they can do whatever they want and there is extremely slim chance they get booted out or investigated.

tankenmate 4y ago

EU commissioners are appointed by member governments, in much the same way that civil servants are appointed by politicians. In most democracies there are three pillars of government, legislative, executive and judicial. Commissioners are a part of the executive. And here lies the difference, the amount of decision making power in the hands of executive vs the legislative, and whether the members of the executive need to be directly elected vs indirectly elected. You could also make the case that representative democracies aren't as good as direct democracies because citizens don't get to vote on laws directly. Obviously there are trade offs between having elected heads of the executive who are more directly accountable to the citizenry but have less subject matter knowledge vs indirectly elected executive who have somewhat less accountability but more knowledge. There is also the case of less corruption because the indirectly elected heads of the executive aren't as beholden to special interests. Which I personally feel is a huge benefit.

mulvya 4y ago
> There is also the case of less corruption because the indirectly elected heads of the executive aren't as beholden to special interests. Unless these heads of the executive need private sector jobs after their tenure.
- tankenmate 4y ago
  This is true, but no more so than politicians.
HPsquared 4y ago
It's just yet another level removed from the voters. If representative democracy is imperfect, then having another level to represent the representatives is more imperfect still.
- arrrg 4y ago
  I want the EU council to hand over many of its powers to the parliament and commission. (I’m fine with the parliament itself proposing and voting on the commission head, I’m not in favor of a directly elected head – but that’s just the German in me speaking where the federal government is set up exactly that way.) It‘s the national governments standing in the way of that, not the EU itself.

hilbert42 4y ago

Right, this accusation is serious enough that we must get to the bottom of it. For starters, we could examine the logs of all messages between Pfizer and the Commission. These logs are held by independent ISPs on both sides of the Atlantic and thus ought to be resistant to tampering.

an9n 4y ago
There is not a snowball's chance in hell that these texts are not archived on a server somewhere. So if we do not see them, it's because 'they' do not want us to see them.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  Right, you're spot on! :-)

blibble 4y ago

> Ursula von der Leyen was not elected by EU citizens it's even worse than that prior to the election there was the usual stuff you'd expect: potential candidates begin interviewed by the press, television debates, where they would explain what they planned to do if they won, why their policy was the right one, etc then after the election all of those candidates were discarded and von der Leyen was appointed as commission president despite not being named prior or participating in the process of democratic scrutiny at all total farce

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

hef19898 4y ago

Maybe the missing messages are saved on the same thumb drive as Zensursula's SMS she sent during the German parliamentary investigations in the Defense Ministry's dealings with outside consultancies, when she happened to be the Defense Minister.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]