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>The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing What is the base o

• elric 3y ago
  Those two statements are orthogonal. EU elections have little impact on EU institutions. The elections are only for the European Parliament. The European Commission, which controls the institutions and dictates policy, does not get elected by the populace. There is a lot of criticism (warranted, IMO) on this state of affairs.
  • mrtksn 3y ago
    Right, but the other EU officials are not Belgians or Germans or aliens from another dimension but people who are appointed by the elected governments in every country. As a result, these elections define part of the EU and the elections in every country defines the rest. In EU countries keep having strong sovereignty, it’s not like the USA. EU here acts more like an alignment institution among countries, it doesn’t actually have powers by itself and it appears that Europeans are still not ready to switch to a US-like system.
    • Detrytus 3y ago
      You have outdated info about how EU works. Since the Lisbon Treaty it is actually evolving towards single super-country, trying to strip member countries from their sovereignty (and mostly succeeding at that, unfortunately). EDIT: in a typical HN fashion people downvote simple statement of the fact, because they are in denial about the fact.
      • mrtksn 3y ago
        It’s a political process that will or will not happen to a point. Currency it’s not there yet, it’s quite far of it and honestly I don’t believe that it will happen before fixing the Eurozone and that’s a hard one.
      • p_l 3y ago
        This is exactly the argument that was used to defang reform of EU Parliament, which gave more power connected directly with voters, and kept the strong but non-transparent EU Commission as the only one with legislative initiative. Because it's easy to blame "Brussel bureaucrat" when it's hardly visible that said bureaucrat is minister and/or represantive from the party that is now campaigning against "brussel's edict".
      • disgruntledphd2 3y ago
        > You have outdated info about how EU works. Since the Lisbon Treaty it is actually evolving towards single super-country, trying to strip member countries from their sovereignty (and mostly succeeding at that, unfortunately). Can you point me to the parts of the Lisbon treaty that facilitate this please?
        • Detrytus 3y ago
          Well, for one, many areas now require "qualified majority vote" instead of unanimous decision. Few key countries (Germany, France and Italy) got their voting weights in both the Council of Ministers and the European Council increased at the expense of everyone else (witch Germany's voting power doubling). European Central Bank got official recognition. European Court of Justice got its jurisdiction expanded.
      • oytis 3y ago
        I'd argue it would be more democratic like that. If we had pan-European parties with their own pan-European agendas, people would know what they are voting for, and would be much more involved. Instead EU is still rather an international organization where governments of member states set the agenda, so the result is a very indirect way of decision making where an individual voter can hardly understand what impact their vote makes.
  • tormeh 3y ago
    The Parliament has veto rights. Nothing gets enacted without parliamentary approval. Which is very good, considering some of the bullshit that comes out of the Commission.
    • anticensor 3y ago
      Legislative veto without legislative initiative is barely useful.
      • disgruntledphd2 3y ago
        True, but note that the national governments (i.e. the Council) also have a veto. But I do agree that Parliament should be given law making powers, and the Commission should just be enforcement and implementation of said laws.
    • aembleton 3y ago
      Can they remove or update bad legislation that is currently in place?
  • SiempreViernes 3y ago
    Sure, but the commission is proposed by nationally elected representatives (namely the heads of state) and then approved by the elected European Parliament, so the overall process is not too undemocratic. Of course, direct election of the commission would be more democratic formally, but the fact is there's not really a truly European polity in the first place so its not clear the outcome would be much better in regards to the problem of the commission being composed of random politicians you never heard of.
    • disgruntledphd2 3y ago
      If you were gonna elect Commissioners/President etc directly, you'd probably end up with something like the US electoral college system. In fact, given that Ireland (a very small country) would have to have a referendum on it, then I can almost guarantee that such a system would over-weight small countries.
  • mariusor 3y ago
    The Commission doesn't "dictate" policy. They are the body that has the power to initiate legislature, but the Parliament (the democratically elected part of the EU orgs) has to vote on them. Also from my interpretation of TFA, the people that expect intelligence agencies to be exempted are national interior ministers (not named though), there's no such thing as a "European Union minister", which have no influence at the EU level.
  • disgruntledphd2 3y ago
    The EU Commission do not dictate policy. This is a convenient fiction that the EU Council (i.e. the national governments) are very keen to retain, as it insulates them from the consequences of their decisions. If you really wanted to be tactical about it, one should vote for a disjoint set of parties in the EU vs the national elections, as this would be more likely to lead to effective supervision and assessment of decisions.
• flir 3y ago
  50% turnout last time around.
  • mrtksn 3y ago
    Not very different from any election in the developed world.
    • Scarjit 3y ago
      It depends, in Germany we enjoy a quite high turnout of ~70-80% for federal elections (https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/2274/umfrage/entwicklung-der-wahlbeteiligung-bei-bundestagswahlen-seit-1949/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/2274/umfrage/...) [The site is in German, but should be fairly easy to read]. While for European elections it is usually 40-50% with huge differences by country (https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/turnout/ https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/turnout/)
      • mrtksn 3y ago
        Then you should vote more on the EU election I guess.
        • flir 3y ago
          Why do you think they don't?
    • sebnun 3y ago
      It has been historically low in Sweden. Last time 55% voted in the EU election while 82% voted in the Swedish election.
      • mrtksn 3y ago
        The more local the more people care but half of the population voting is not really drastically different than 2/3 of the population voting. It would be better if more people voted though.
• Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
  I'm not anti-EU, on the contrary, but honestly the claim is true in practice. I'm not going to give you any hard data, but I think it's just obvious in plain sight. At least in my country, almost all the debate in news outlets is about national or local issues. EU regulations do come up, but they are always depicted as something that comes "from above" and not tied to specific parties or people. If there is controversy about a national law, the media will blame things on the government or on the opposition (depending on their bias). If there is controversy about an European law, the media will blame an abstract "Brussels"... or directly the government or the opposition anyway, as they're the ones who implement it. In the EU elections, most (euphemism for all) people I know just vote to the party they prefer in terms of national or regional politics. Almost no one votes because they want a given European directive to be implemented. Sometimes I have actually made some effort to find out what each of my country's parties voted in some EU decision, and most of the times I failed. It's not clear what decisions come from the Commission or from Parliament (many come from the Commission which is not even directly elected but elected by local governments, by the way). And even for those from Parliament, it's not clear how to find detailed results of Parliament votes. Mind you, I'm not saying there is no way - probably there is one, if you are very well informed or have a lot of time, but there is definitely no way that I could find in 20 minutes of Googling, and most people won't make a greater investment than that. Not sure if it's the same in all countries, and not sure how to fix it... but yes, I do have the perception that EU institutions are detached from citizens. That said, this has its pros. If citizens had more of a say, we'd probably have no low-emmission zones, no or almost no pollution regulations, etc. Many environmental policies that are, IMO, unquestionably good, are pushed to reluctant citizens using the "hey, don't blame me, it comes from Brussels" wildcard, and we are better for it (again, IMO). Sad, but true.
  • mrtksn 3y ago
    I see your point but it appears that countries prefer keeping their sovereignty and as a result EU doesn’t have any direct impact on people lives. Every now and then countries agree on some standardization and it’s only then when people see an EU impact on their daily lives.
  • tormeh 3y ago
• a0123 3y ago
  There are elections in most countries in the world. There most likely are in your country. Would you say the people you've elected aren't detached from your way of life and concerns?
  • mrtksn 3y ago
    The thing about elections is that you don’t elect the detached ones. If they are elected despite what you think about them, it simply means more people think otherwise.
• freehorse 3y ago
  European parliament has a democracy-decorative role. All the important institutional decisions are taken by the commission and the european central bank. The parliament at best approves, or works on the less important stuff. EU is a very undemocratic institution, despite all the pro-democracy talking.
  • mrtksn 3y ago
    Are those in the commission all Belgians? Where do they come from? What happens if the parliament doesn’t approve? Do “they” do it anyway?
• RobotToaster 3y ago
  The two democratic bodies of the EU, the EU Parliament and Council of Ministers, do not have the power to submit new legislation. Only the appointed Commission has the power to submit documents.
  • mrtksn 3y ago
    Who appointed the commission and are they Germans or Belgians or something?
    • josefx 3y ago
      When the head of the commission was elected various parties presented their favorites for a direct election as had been done in 2014. When the results came in for 2019 parliament refused to accept them and selected its own favorites from out of nowhere. An election result that can be disregarded at the whim of the current ruling parties does not paint a very democratic picture.
  • toyg 3y ago
    The Commission acts almost exclusively on mandates extended by the EU Council (i.e. national states), which also nominates commissioners. EU Council effectively tells the Commission "Something should be done about X; write a directive to achieve Z, K, and J". Then the Commission sits down with MEPs and national ministers to bang something into shape. It very rarely comes up with original policy suggestions, and when it happens it tends to be big news - like with the daylight savings stuff, which eventually wasn't carried through because the EU Council (i.e. governments) wasn't particularly interested. Political initiative and agenda-setting, in the EU, are firmly in the hands of national governments - they just hide behind "Bruxelles bureaucrats" as a shield.
• PurpleRamen 3y ago
  There is usually very little news coverage and public discussion with anything going on at EU-level, unless it's a hot topic or something that concerns a specific number of people in some way, like in this case. And EU-Elections have usually a pretty low participation, showing how many people it really concerns.