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The bigger issue is that we need to make the EU actually democratic. Start by removing every branch but the European Parliament. That's the only solution.

arlcode 1y ago
The EU council is formed by the democratically elected member states. This follows an "upper house" approach used in many european countries. I'm strongly in favor of giving the parliament the ability to propose laws (directives). Currently only the comission can do that.
- lmpdev 1y ago
  As an Australian normally subject to two upper houses (the current state I happen to live in is the only unicameral state) that seems very counter intuitive The way it seems to work in practice (here at least) is most partisan/normative legislation goes through the lower house upwards And bipartisan (or broadly unpopular or highly technical) legislation goes from the upper house down It’s more complicated than that, but a one way flow committee sounds extremely restrictive for meaningful reform A small number of pathways is a good thing, one lone process is probably not (you risk over fitting on both sides) Edit: Australian legislation has a lot of flaws, but this multimodal setup from my experience is not one of them
  - boxed 1y ago
    I believe the point of the EU structure is precisely to make it hard to make laws, because the EU was designed to NOT be a federalist system.
    - rgblambda 1y ago
      I think it's less to make it hard to make laws and more to ensure the primacy of the member states governments over the parliament, but for the same reason you gave. To not become a federation. In theory, if parliament had the power to propose legislation, the council would still be able to shoot those bills down, assuming no other changes to the EU structure.
    - graemep 1y ago
      What is it designed to be? The aim is "ever closer union". right? Every change in the EU treaties inches closer to federalism. A common currency without a common fiscal policy has already proven not to work well.
      - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        > Every change in the EU treaties inches closer to federalism. The Treaties haven't changed since 2011 or so, and I don't expect any changes in the next decade at the very least.
        graemep 1y ago
        Agreed, no big changes imminent. I was thinking more about the longer term. I would expect change in 20 or 30 years, and a lot of things could happen to change things even in the next decade (another financial crisis like 2008, another pandemic, wars, etc.).
        disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        Personally I'd love to see a more federal EU but it's very unlikely to happen barring some absurdly large crises.
      - pas 1y ago
        there will be always inequalities and "blind spots", just look at the US, more homogeneous in many ways, yet still there's no single market for many things (healthcare for example) education seems similarly harmonized in both unions (the Bologna system works pretty well) but just as in the US border issues are always affecting members differently (migration flows North, right? so southern borders are affected more; at the same time migrants went to NYC and Berlin because they are rich cities with opportunities and very migration-friendly policies) and of course federalism in the US is also suffering from vetocracy (aka. tragedy of the anticommons), see housing, which very directly leads to "blue states" losing seats in the House (and similarly housing issues are catalyzing radicalization in the EU too) (and the solution to the housing challenges are not obvious, and even if there are success stories - like Vienna - city-state politics is stuck in the usual local minimas)
  - NoboruWataya 1y ago
    I think this is your "intuition" because it is what you are used to, I see no reason why this would be the objectively correct way to do things. The legislative procedure in the EU is a bit more complex than laws simply flowing "up" or "down". There is a trilogue, which is effectively a three-way negotiation between the Council, Parliament and Commission. But ultimately the approval of Parliament and in most cases the Council is required (ie, Commission cannot force laws). The EU system is also not without its flaws but it's not the worst. Enacting broad, sweeping legislation is cumbersome and difficult which is a feature, not a bug. If we had a more streamlined system we'd probably already have chat control by now.
    - lmpdev 1y ago
      Oh I completely agree with all your points I’m just highlighting inefficiencies and inflexibilities where I see them to start a dialogue
    - doikor 1y ago
      > There is a trilogue, which is effectively a three-way negotiation between the Council, Parliament and Commission. But ultimately the approval of Parliament and in most cases the Council is required (ie, Commission cannot force laws). Also EU can't actually make any laws it makes directives that are then up to each member state to implement on their own. It also has no police/military/force to actually enforce that the member states implement the directives. Basically everything is very much about cooperation or finding a compromise everyone can agree on as there is no way to force anyone to do anything really (outside of cutting away EU funding but then the member state can also stop paying their dues which does not work for most of the big states as they pay more then they get back) The thing where EU has power and actual means to enforce things is the reason it was originally created for. Trade.
      - NoboruWataya 1y ago
        Well, it can make regulations, which are directly effective. And some directives are actually directly effective - there is a whole line of case law on this (starting with a case called Van Gend en Loos). But yes, the whole thing is of course based on cooperation between states. EU law applies in EU member states (whether directly or indirectly) because those member states say so.
- incone123 1y ago
  Do any member states follow the model of only the non directly elected upper house can propose legislation?
- Agingcoder 1y ago
  I think there’s a naming difficulty : the council of the European Union is the upper chamber, while the European council is not !
somewhereoutth 1y ago
The highest body of the EU is the Council. Nothing happens without the approval of the Council. In comparison, the Commission is merely the civil service or secretariat, answering to the Council. Each member state has a seat at the Council, and for almost all issues a veto. Each member state is democratic, therefore the EU itself is entirely democratic. That doesn't of course mean the right decisions are always made!
- mytailorisrich 1y ago
  Except the Commission and Von Der Leyen keep pushing to assert themselves as an executive branch.
- nickslaughter02 1y ago
  > and for almost all issues a veto Notably ChatControl is not one of them.
mytailorisrich 1y ago
The only solution is to stop the EU level power grab by formally restricting what the EU can do and to make sure member states remain where most of the power lies. The US have that. The EU does not so as time passes the EU's power keeps creeping up.
- boxed 1y ago
  The US has that in theory, just like the limits on the president. But in practice the US has been centralizing power since the start, and the EU has a looooong way to go to come even close.
- immibis 1y ago
  The EU is not sovereign. Member countries can just outright ignore EU law (see: Hungary or the former UK) and the only recourses are civil things like issuing declarations, withholding payments, crossing them off treaties, or kicking them out of the EU. There are no EU police that can be involuntarily forced on a country the same way the USA can send armed federal police or military into its states. Doing anything like that would be a declaration of war. A state is a monopoly on violence and EU member states overwhelmingly control their own.
  - croemer 1y ago
    s/the former UK/formerly the UK/
- rbehrends 1y ago
  > The EU does not so as time passes the EU's power keeps creeping up. Actually, the EU has the same concept of enumerated powers (called "competences" in the case of the EU). They are listed in articles 2-6 TFEU [1]. You may argue over whether the EU has too many competences or (in some areas) too little, but it's the same principle. The EU cannot legislate outside areas where power has been expressly conferred to it by the treaties. This is in fact one point of contention over the "chat control" legislation. It is supposed to be enacted under the "internal market" competence, but similar to the US commerce clause, there is a legal debate over whether that competence is actually sufficient to enable such legislation or whether it is legal cover for encroachment on competences reserved to the member states. This would of course be up to the ECJ to decide, just as the US Suprement Court would have to decide if any given US federal legislation is covered by the commerce clause. In addition, there is the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the ECJ could also strike down EU legislation (as it has done before) if it violates the rights protected by the Charter. [1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Consolidated_version_of_the_Treaty_on_the_Functioning_of_the_European_Union/Part_One:_Principles#TITLE_I:_CATEGORIES_AND_AREAS_OF_UNION_COMPETENCE https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Consolidated_version_of_the_T...
tannhaeuser 1y ago
The postulate for EU structural reform towards perfection is typical of HN and other nerds drooling over their programming language and frameworks ;) but in real life had been tried with the Lisboa treaty to the extent it was deemed possible, and no-one involved with it wants to reopen the case. I'm also sometimes angry at EU as well, but the reality is there are over twenty member states, with their constitutions, languages, democratic and other traditions such as federalism and minority rules, bilateral treatments, special interests, and backroom deals to take care of. It's a miracle the EU exists at all.
- raxxorraxor 1y ago
  I don't think much abstraction or design is needed. We are looking at the output here and that is chat control. The EU will have to be measured against this output. The unpopular legislative processes are pushed through via the EU isn't something new. And it is a very serious flaw that needs to be fixed.
hnhg 1y ago
And neuter the influence of deep-pocketed lobbying entities - US entities in particular seem to spend a lot of money on influencing EU politics: https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/ https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/
- amelius 1y ago
  Wow, Apple paid 7M for 9 people to have 144 meetings with the EC. I'm in the wrong line of business. On the other hand, I'm thinking can we find 9 unpaid volunteers on HN to do the same?
  - pas 1y ago
    yes, the obvious problem is that Apple paid people so in turn they worked to make these meetings happen, HN doesn't pay random people (yet!?) to knock on doors in various EU cities. the "obvious" solution seems to be to make these meetings open, sure industry wants to push their thing, put it on the calendar, and let civil society delegate someone, and industry pays for that too.
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    You're assuming the lobbyists keep that money.
    - amelius 1y ago
      What you're thinking of would be illegal, but indeed.
- jb1991 1y ago
  This site even has a disclaimer on the front page that its information is not necessarily accurate. Take it all with a grain of salt.
NoboruWataya 1y ago
Parliament needs to approve any meaningful EU legislation anyway. The Commission cannot legislate. The problem isn't that the EU is undemocratic, it's that our elected lawmakers all seem to want to trample our privacy for one reason or another (see: the UK)
cm2187 1y ago
The EU parliament is highly dysfunctional. First look at the number of MEP that have been indicted for corruption. Also in the countries I know, political parties send as MEP their least able politicians that they don’t know what to do and would never be elected if their name was on the ticket. Combine that with the flaws of all the national parliaments and you get a sorry clown show.
ktosobcy 1y ago
Erm... it's as democratic as it possibly can be when it comes to a union of independend, sovereign states... We do have EP with directly elected MEPs; we have CoE which is indirectly elected but still represents the "will of the people" but on the state level; then we have the European Council which is also in a way representative of state interest and then we have indirectly elected by the aformentioned European Comission. The concept of indirectly elected representatives is not new - in most democracies you vote for MPs and they then form the government and choose prime minister. Given that the EU is "one level up" it complicates stuff. We could argue that we could make it completely democratic and only have the parliment but this would completely sidetrack any influence of the state. So if we want to maintain the balance we have this convoluted system. Ideally EP should have legislative initiative rights and the president of the EC should be elected more transparently (for example the vote in EP should be public).
- psychoslave 1y ago
  Democracy is where people, or at least those given full citizenship, have a duty to debate and decide the rules they will be agreeing to follow, directly. Anything else is green washing. Sure we can always still keep nuances in the many actual regimes which pretend to be democratic. But still the baseline is to sell bullshit democracy. Democracy require well educated citizen which are given the relevant resources and were raised with will to take the burden of civil service for life and dedication to thrive the whole society.
  - ktosobcy 1y ago
    By your definition there is virtually no democratic entity in this world :) > Anything else is green washing. you mean "democracy-washing"? ;) The world is not perfect. Striving for perfection is futile...
    - psychoslave 1y ago
      That's what I said yes, by it's very definition, no current contemporary government is a democracy. I'm not necessarily picky with every word we use informaly. As you noticed with green washing, which here was colloquially used as "bullshit to pretend to be virtuous because manipulating public opinion open some hope to control its behavior". But when it comes to the official fundamental statement of what the government ruling people is pretending to be, I do expect something more aligned with the first degree interpretation of the words. Republic means there is no State secret. Democracy means that citizen rules and decides the laws. I have the firm conviction that asking better than newspeak level nomenclature is not asking for perfection. That just mere basic honesty. Consenting that utter lies to serve as base political denomination with the excuse that nothing is perfect is just lazily opening doors to broader harsher lies for those willing to gain carte blanche on exercising political power with a flow of void sentences.
rbehrends 1y ago
What you are proposing would amount replacing the current bicameral legislature (with the European Parliament as the lower house and the Council of the EU as the upper house) with a unicameral legislature. That would actually make it easier for bad laws to be passed, especially as the supermajority required in the Council is currently the biggest obstacle for this kind of legislation. I'll also note that nothing here is per se undemocratic. Both the Parliament and the Council are made up of elected members. The members of the Council (as members of the national governments) are indirectly elected, but elected all the same. Direct election is not a requirement for a democracy (see election of the US president or the US Senate prior to the 17th amendment or the Senate of Canada right now). That does not mean that there isn't plenty of valid criticism of the EU's current structure, but claiming that it is not "actually democratic" falls far short of a meaningful critique.
- HexPhantom 1y ago
  The EU isn't undemocratic, but it feels undemocratic to many, and that's a legitimacy issue worth taking seriously
  - port11 1y ago
    The EU feels undemocratic because it focuses on a lot of legislation that doesn't reflect what people want. It also works on some good stuff. Over the past decade I went from a big fan to someone very troubled about the political goals of the elites. And, having lived in Brussels, you can sorta see why they're disconnected from the “will of the people”…
    - throw-the-towel 1y ago
      What's the problem with living in Brussels? I'm not European, and very curious about that.
      - inglor_cz 1y ago
        They have their own neighbourhood and rarely mix with the rest of the population. Their Dunbar number (the max. amount of meaningful interpersonal connections that a person can maintain) is fully reached within that inner circle of European power. Ironically, we managed to re-create a Forbidden City full of mandarins and eunuchs, or a new Versailles, only now they wear modern suits. Scaling power institutions is always tricky, and this is the main risk.
johannes1234321 1y ago
That would lead to turning EU from a union of states into a state in itself. This may be great, but would depower national states. And it has a major problem: There is no European public. Cultural differences ad language barrier make it hard to follow debates and issues. It is a lot simpler to follow my elected governments behavior. Also the parliament would lose its style of working. Currently there is cooperation accross parties and a less strict "government vs opposition" than in most other parliaments, which means that MEPs actually got a vote (in the areas where the parliament matters) instead dof being whipped by party leaders. And then: Most decision power is with the council, which is made of democratically elected governments (if we ignore the Hungary problem ...)
- throw-the-towel 1y ago
  How does Swiss politics work? They also have multiple languages.
  - johannes1234321 1y ago
    They got 4 languages, not 24. Of those 4 there is one clearly dominant (German) and a clear second. Most debates happen in German. With it's 24 languages the EU debates have interesting interpretation challenges, as they don't have interpreters for going from any language to any language, but often the translate first into one language (say from Latvian into German) and then some other language (German to Portuguese), which loses a lot of nuance and color from the language. Also media can cover it better, with few languages and politicians can provide their press statements in those few languages. And then culture is a lot more similar, which helps to identify the "relevant" topics and way to talk about it.
Scarblac 1y ago
That means removing souvereignty from the member states, and there's no way they're all going to agree on that any time soon.
izacus 1y ago
Funny how we never hear WHY EU is undemocratic in these posts. It's always this one line dropped in the middle of conversations. And every time I push a bit the answer seems to be "EU didn't follow my preferred decision". :P
- raxxorraxor 1y ago
  No, for a time any criticism about EU democracy was brushed away. Especially at the time around Brexit. For obvious reasons. But they are undeniable in theoretical and practical terms. This is why the competence of the EU was restricted at first. Problem is that this restriction did get too loose. Chat control should even be an EU issue. And few national states would be courageous enough to propose such legislation because the democratic accountability would be much stronger.
- pcrh 1y ago
  >WHY EU is undemocratic The answer is simple. The EU institutions cannot be both directly elected and have executive authority over member states. The reason is that by doing so one would create a conflict between the "democratic legitimacy" of the EU executive and the "democratic legitimacy" of national parliaments. In the current model, the member states retain ultimate authority and democratic legitimacy through their delegates to the Council of Ministers.
msh 1y ago
That would just transfer power from the small countries to the big countries.
Xelbair 1y ago
Or just make European Commission be directly elected in such system: - candidate needs to be proposed in country - EU wide elections are held, candidates can only gather votes outside of their own country. - Votes are weighted by amount of seats in EU parliament. What we have right now does not work at all, EC has 0 responsibility(towards EU citizens) for their own actions and is basically a magical black box.
- cuu508 1y ago
  > candidates can only gather votes outside of their own country Few people would do the homework of researching hundreds of candidates from other countries.
  - Xelbair 1y ago
    They represent whole of EU, and by EC's words they focus on interests beyond benefit of their own countries so they already have to do that. in theory at least.
munksbeer 1y ago
> The bigger issue is that we need to make the EU actually democratic. Start by removing every branch but the European Parliament. That's the only solution. For goodness sake, you are sending people on goose chases instead of the real problem. What happened here falls under the exact definition of representative democracy. There are some politicians from certain nation states pushing for the policy. They request the commission (the civil service type group) to work on the proposals, and then elected MEPs vote on it. Again and again I have to keep repeating the same message: This is NOT some random bureaucrats in some EU group deciding they want to push a policy. This is our elected politicians being influenced some some other agency to push chat control. They're pushing it through the EU commission, because that is how it works. Please people, inform yourselves, or you're going to get this all wrong and fight the wrong fight.
doikor 1y ago
Why would any member state give away their sovereignty like that? EU is setup like it is on purpose. Parliament represents the people, council the member countries and commission EU itself. The one with most power is the council as nothing really goes though without their (heads of state of the member countries) approval as EU has no legislative powers of its own but instead member countries have to implement the directives.

arlcode 1y ago

The EU council is formed by the democratically elected member states. This follows an "upper house" approach used in many european countries. I'm strongly in favor of giving the parliament the ability to propose laws (directives). Currently only the comission can do that.

lmpdev 1y ago
As an Australian normally subject to two upper houses (the current state I happen to live in is the only unicameral state) that seems very counter intuitive The way it seems to work in practice (here at least) is most partisan/normative legislation goes through the lower house upwards And bipartisan (or broadly unpopular or highly technical) legislation goes from the upper house down It’s more complicated than that, but a one way flow committee sounds extremely restrictive for meaningful reform A small number of pathways is a good thing, one lone process is probably not (you risk over fitting on both sides) Edit: Australian legislation has a lot of flaws, but this multimodal setup from my experience is not one of them
- boxed 1y ago
  I believe the point of the EU structure is precisely to make it hard to make laws, because the EU was designed to NOT be a federalist system.
  - rgblambda 1y ago
    I think it's less to make it hard to make laws and more to ensure the primacy of the member states governments over the parliament, but for the same reason you gave. To not become a federation. In theory, if parliament had the power to propose legislation, the council would still be able to shoot those bills down, assuming no other changes to the EU structure.
  - graemep 1y ago
    What is it designed to be? The aim is "ever closer union". right? Every change in the EU treaties inches closer to federalism. A common currency without a common fiscal policy has already proven not to work well.
    - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
      > Every change in the EU treaties inches closer to federalism. The Treaties haven't changed since 2011 or so, and I don't expect any changes in the next decade at the very least.
      - graemep 1y ago
        Agreed, no big changes imminent. I was thinking more about the longer term. I would expect change in 20 or 30 years, and a lot of things could happen to change things even in the next decade (another financial crisis like 2008, another pandemic, wars, etc.).
        disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        Personally I'd love to see a more federal EU but it's very unlikely to happen barring some absurdly large crises.
    - pas 1y ago
      there will be always inequalities and "blind spots", just look at the US, more homogeneous in many ways, yet still there's no single market for many things (healthcare for example) education seems similarly harmonized in both unions (the Bologna system works pretty well) but just as in the US border issues are always affecting members differently (migration flows North, right? so southern borders are affected more; at the same time migrants went to NYC and Berlin because they are rich cities with opportunities and very migration-friendly policies) and of course federalism in the US is also suffering from vetocracy (aka. tragedy of the anticommons), see housing, which very directly leads to "blue states" losing seats in the House (and similarly housing issues are catalyzing radicalization in the EU too) (and the solution to the housing challenges are not obvious, and even if there are success stories - like Vienna - city-state politics is stuck in the usual local minimas)
- NoboruWataya 1y ago
  I think this is your "intuition" because it is what you are used to, I see no reason why this would be the objectively correct way to do things. The legislative procedure in the EU is a bit more complex than laws simply flowing "up" or "down". There is a trilogue, which is effectively a three-way negotiation between the Council, Parliament and Commission. But ultimately the approval of Parliament and in most cases the Council is required (ie, Commission cannot force laws). The EU system is also not without its flaws but it's not the worst. Enacting broad, sweeping legislation is cumbersome and difficult which is a feature, not a bug. If we had a more streamlined system we'd probably already have chat control by now.
  - lmpdev 1y ago
    Oh I completely agree with all your points I’m just highlighting inefficiencies and inflexibilities where I see them to start a dialogue
  - doikor 1y ago
    > There is a trilogue, which is effectively a three-way negotiation between the Council, Parliament and Commission. But ultimately the approval of Parliament and in most cases the Council is required (ie, Commission cannot force laws). Also EU can't actually make any laws it makes directives that are then up to each member state to implement on their own. It also has no police/military/force to actually enforce that the member states implement the directives. Basically everything is very much about cooperation or finding a compromise everyone can agree on as there is no way to force anyone to do anything really (outside of cutting away EU funding but then the member state can also stop paying their dues which does not work for most of the big states as they pay more then they get back) The thing where EU has power and actual means to enforce things is the reason it was originally created for. Trade.
    - NoboruWataya 1y ago
      Well, it can make regulations, which are directly effective. And some directives are actually directly effective - there is a whole line of case law on this (starting with a case called Van Gend en Loos). But yes, the whole thing is of course based on cooperation between states. EU law applies in EU member states (whether directly or indirectly) because those member states say so.
incone123 1y ago
Do any member states follow the model of only the non directly elected upper house can propose legislation?
Agingcoder 1y ago
I think there’s a naming difficulty : the council of the European Union is the upper chamber, while the European council is not !

somewhereoutth 1y ago

The highest body of the EU is the Council. Nothing happens without the approval of the Council. In comparison, the Commission is merely the civil service or secretariat, answering to the Council. Each member state has a seat at the Council, and for almost all issues a veto. Each member state is democratic, therefore the EU itself is entirely democratic. That doesn't of course mean the right decisions are always made!

mytailorisrich 1y ago
Except the Commission and Von Der Leyen keep pushing to assert themselves as an executive branch.
nickslaughter02 1y ago
> and for almost all issues a veto Notably ChatControl is not one of them.

mytailorisrich 1y ago

The only solution is to stop the EU level power grab by formally restricting what the EU can do and to make sure member states remain where most of the power lies. The US have that. The EU does not so as time passes the EU's power keeps creeping up.

boxed 1y ago
The US has that in theory, just like the limits on the president. But in practice the US has been centralizing power since the start, and the EU has a looooong way to go to come even close.
immibis 1y ago
The EU is not sovereign. Member countries can just outright ignore EU law (see: Hungary or the former UK) and the only recourses are civil things like issuing declarations, withholding payments, crossing them off treaties, or kicking them out of the EU. There are no EU police that can be involuntarily forced on a country the same way the USA can send armed federal police or military into its states. Doing anything like that would be a declaration of war. A state is a monopoly on violence and EU member states overwhelmingly control their own.
- croemer 1y ago
  s/the former UK/formerly the UK/
rbehrends 1y ago
> The EU does not so as time passes the EU's power keeps creeping up. Actually, the EU has the same concept of enumerated powers (called "competences" in the case of the EU). They are listed in articles 2-6 TFEU [1]. You may argue over whether the EU has too many competences or (in some areas) too little, but it's the same principle. The EU cannot legislate outside areas where power has been expressly conferred to it by the treaties. This is in fact one point of contention over the "chat control" legislation. It is supposed to be enacted under the "internal market" competence, but similar to the US commerce clause, there is a legal debate over whether that competence is actually sufficient to enable such legislation or whether it is legal cover for encroachment on competences reserved to the member states. This would of course be up to the ECJ to decide, just as the US Suprement Court would have to decide if any given US federal legislation is covered by the commerce clause. In addition, there is the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the ECJ could also strike down EU legislation (as it has done before) if it violates the rights protected by the Charter. [1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Consolidated_version_of_the_Treaty_on_the_Functioning_of_the_European_Union/Part_One:_Principles#TITLE_I:_CATEGORIES_AND_AREAS_OF_UNION_COMPETENCE https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Consolidated_version_of_the_T...

tannhaeuser 1y ago

The postulate for EU structural reform towards perfection is typical of HN and other nerds drooling over their programming language and frameworks ;) but in real life had been tried with the Lisboa treaty to the extent it was deemed possible, and no-one involved with it wants to reopen the case. I'm also sometimes angry at EU as well, but the reality is there are over twenty member states, with their constitutions, languages, democratic and other traditions such as federalism and minority rules, bilateral treatments, special interests, and backroom deals to take care of. It's a miracle the EU exists at all.

raxxorraxor 1y ago
I don't think much abstraction or design is needed. We are looking at the output here and that is chat control. The EU will have to be measured against this output. The unpopular legislative processes are pushed through via the EU isn't something new. And it is a very serious flaw that needs to be fixed.

hnhg 1y ago

And neuter the influence of deep-pocketed lobbying entities - US entities in particular seem to spend a lot of money on influencing EU politics: https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/ https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/

amelius 1y ago
Wow, Apple paid 7M for 9 people to have 144 meetings with the EC. I'm in the wrong line of business. On the other hand, I'm thinking can we find 9 unpaid volunteers on HN to do the same?
- pas 1y ago
  yes, the obvious problem is that Apple paid people so in turn they worked to make these meetings happen, HN doesn't pay random people (yet!?) to knock on doors in various EU cities. the "obvious" solution seems to be to make these meetings open, sure industry wants to push their thing, put it on the calendar, and let civil society delegate someone, and industry pays for that too.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  You're assuming the lobbyists keep that money.
  - amelius 1y ago
    What you're thinking of would be illegal, but indeed.
jb1991 1y ago
This site even has a disclaimer on the front page that its information is not necessarily accurate. Take it all with a grain of salt.

NoboruWataya 1y ago

Parliament needs to approve any meaningful EU legislation anyway. The Commission cannot legislate. The problem isn't that the EU is undemocratic, it's that our elected lawmakers all seem to want to trample our privacy for one reason or another (see: the UK)

cm2187 1y ago

The EU parliament is highly dysfunctional. First look at the number of MEP that have been indicted for corruption. Also in the countries I know, political parties send as MEP their least able politicians that they don’t know what to do and would never be elected if their name was on the ticket. Combine that with the flaws of all the national parliaments and you get a sorry clown show.

ktosobcy 1y ago

Erm... it's as democratic as it possibly can be when it comes to a union of independend, sovereign states... We do have EP with directly elected MEPs; we have CoE which is indirectly elected but still represents the "will of the people" but on the state level; then we have the European Council which is also in a way representative of state interest and then we have indirectly elected by the aformentioned European Comission. The concept of indirectly elected representatives is not new - in most democracies you vote for MPs and they then form the government and choose prime minister. Given that the EU is "one level up" it complicates stuff. We could argue that we could make it completely democratic and only have the parliment but this would completely sidetrack any influence of the state. So if we want to maintain the balance we have this convoluted system. Ideally EP should have legislative initiative rights and the president of the EC should be elected more transparently (for example the vote in EP should be public).

psychoslave 1y ago
Democracy is where people, or at least those given full citizenship, have a duty to debate and decide the rules they will be agreeing to follow, directly. Anything else is green washing. Sure we can always still keep nuances in the many actual regimes which pretend to be democratic. But still the baseline is to sell bullshit democracy. Democracy require well educated citizen which are given the relevant resources and were raised with will to take the burden of civil service for life and dedication to thrive the whole society.
- ktosobcy 1y ago
  By your definition there is virtually no democratic entity in this world :) > Anything else is green washing. you mean "democracy-washing"? ;) The world is not perfect. Striving for perfection is futile...
  - psychoslave 1y ago
    That's what I said yes, by it's very definition, no current contemporary government is a democracy. I'm not necessarily picky with every word we use informaly. As you noticed with green washing, which here was colloquially used as "bullshit to pretend to be virtuous because manipulating public opinion open some hope to control its behavior". But when it comes to the official fundamental statement of what the government ruling people is pretending to be, I do expect something more aligned with the first degree interpretation of the words. Republic means there is no State secret. Democracy means that citizen rules and decides the laws. I have the firm conviction that asking better than newspeak level nomenclature is not asking for perfection. That just mere basic honesty. Consenting that utter lies to serve as base political denomination with the excuse that nothing is perfect is just lazily opening doors to broader harsher lies for those willing to gain carte blanche on exercising political power with a flow of void sentences.

rbehrends 1y ago

What you are proposing would amount replacing the current bicameral legislature (with the European Parliament as the lower house and the Council of the EU as the upper house) with a unicameral legislature. That would actually make it easier for bad laws to be passed, especially as the supermajority required in the Council is currently the biggest obstacle for this kind of legislation. I'll also note that nothing here is per se undemocratic. Both the Parliament and the Council are made up of elected members. The members of the Council (as members of the national governments) are indirectly elected, but elected all the same. Direct election is not a requirement for a democracy (see election of the US president or the US Senate prior to the 17th amendment or the Senate of Canada right now). That does not mean that there isn't plenty of valid criticism of the EU's current structure, but claiming that it is not "actually democratic" falls far short of a meaningful critique.

HexPhantom 1y ago
The EU isn't undemocratic, but it feels undemocratic to many, and that's a legitimacy issue worth taking seriously
- port11 1y ago
  The EU feels undemocratic because it focuses on a lot of legislation that doesn't reflect what people want. It also works on some good stuff. Over the past decade I went from a big fan to someone very troubled about the political goals of the elites. And, having lived in Brussels, you can sorta see why they're disconnected from the “will of the people”…
  - throw-the-towel 1y ago
    What's the problem with living in Brussels? I'm not European, and very curious about that.
    - inglor_cz 1y ago
      They have their own neighbourhood and rarely mix with the rest of the population. Their Dunbar number (the max. amount of meaningful interpersonal connections that a person can maintain) is fully reached within that inner circle of European power. Ironically, we managed to re-create a Forbidden City full of mandarins and eunuchs, or a new Versailles, only now they wear modern suits. Scaling power institutions is always tricky, and this is the main risk.

johannes1234321 1y ago

That would lead to turning EU from a union of states into a state in itself. This may be great, but would depower national states. And it has a major problem: There is no European public. Cultural differences ad language barrier make it hard to follow debates and issues. It is a lot simpler to follow my elected governments behavior. Also the parliament would lose its style of working. Currently there is cooperation accross parties and a less strict "government vs opposition" than in most other parliaments, which means that MEPs actually got a vote (in the areas where the parliament matters) instead dof being whipped by party leaders. And then: Most decision power is with the council, which is made of democratically elected governments (if we ignore the Hungary problem ...)

throw-the-towel 1y ago
How does Swiss politics work? They also have multiple languages.
- johannes1234321 1y ago
  They got 4 languages, not 24. Of those 4 there is one clearly dominant (German) and a clear second. Most debates happen in German. With it's 24 languages the EU debates have interesting interpretation challenges, as they don't have interpreters for going from any language to any language, but often the translate first into one language (say from Latvian into German) and then some other language (German to Portuguese), which loses a lot of nuance and color from the language. Also media can cover it better, with few languages and politicians can provide their press statements in those few languages. And then culture is a lot more similar, which helps to identify the "relevant" topics and way to talk about it.

Scarblac 1y ago

That means removing souvereignty from the member states, and there's no way they're all going to agree on that any time soon.

izacus 1y ago

Funny how we never hear WHY EU is undemocratic in these posts. It's always this one line dropped in the middle of conversations. And every time I push a bit the answer seems to be "EU didn't follow my preferred decision". :P

raxxorraxor 1y ago
No, for a time any criticism about EU democracy was brushed away. Especially at the time around Brexit. For obvious reasons. But they are undeniable in theoretical and practical terms. This is why the competence of the EU was restricted at first. Problem is that this restriction did get too loose. Chat control should even be an EU issue. And few national states would be courageous enough to propose such legislation because the democratic accountability would be much stronger.
pcrh 1y ago
>WHY EU is undemocratic The answer is simple. The EU institutions cannot be both directly elected and have executive authority over member states. The reason is that by doing so one would create a conflict between the "democratic legitimacy" of the EU executive and the "democratic legitimacy" of national parliaments. In the current model, the member states retain ultimate authority and democratic legitimacy through their delegates to the Council of Ministers.

msh 1y ago

That would just transfer power from the small countries to the big countries.

Xelbair 1y ago

Or just make European Commission be directly elected in such system: - candidate needs to be proposed in country - EU wide elections are held, candidates can only gather votes outside of their own country. - Votes are weighted by amount of seats in EU parliament. What we have right now does not work at all, EC has 0 responsibility(towards EU citizens) for their own actions and is basically a magical black box.

cuu508 1y ago
> candidates can only gather votes outside of their own country Few people would do the homework of researching hundreds of candidates from other countries.
- Xelbair 1y ago
  They represent whole of EU, and by EC's words they focus on interests beyond benefit of their own countries so they already have to do that. in theory at least.

munksbeer 1y ago

> The bigger issue is that we need to make the EU actually democratic. Start by removing every branch but the European Parliament. That's the only solution. For goodness sake, you are sending people on goose chases instead of the real problem. What happened here falls under the exact definition of representative democracy. There are some politicians from certain nation states pushing for the policy. They request the commission (the civil service type group) to work on the proposals, and then elected MEPs vote on it. Again and again I have to keep repeating the same message: This is NOT some random bureaucrats in some EU group deciding they want to push a policy. This is our elected politicians being influenced some some other agency to push chat control. They're pushing it through the EU commission, because that is how it works. Please people, inform yourselves, or you're going to get this all wrong and fight the wrong fight.

doikor 1y ago

Why would any member state give away their sovereignty like that? EU is setup like it is on purpose. Parliament represents the people, council the member countries and commission EU itself. The one with most power is the council as nothing really goes though without their (heads of state of the member countries) approval as EU has no legislative powers of its own but instead member countries have to implement the directives.