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> They can elect representatives They cannot. The EU Parliament cannot pass, change or repeal laws. Its representatives can't represent. If you mean elect nat

> They can elect representatives They cannot. The EU Parliament cannot pass, change or repeal laws. Its representatives can't represent. If you mean elect national representatives, then the EU treaties were deliberately written to only give them one option - exit entirely and be trade sanctioned by the others as a result, who must obey constitutionally even if it's self harm and they don't want to do it. The EU is designed from the ground up to look slightly democratic from a distance without actually being so. Ordinary people living and working in member states have zero influence over these kinds of regulations which is why stuff like the DMA doesn't reflect their actual legislative priorities, which according to polls for a long time are primarily economic and immigration related, sometimes climate. If you look at how the political class treated Brexit, you can see why it's so hard to influence these decisions.

KoolKat23 5mo ago
If it's not in the EU parliaments jurisdiction, it's in the EU council's. As a rule, all members states have to be democratic and you can simply vote out your EU council member i.e. your head of state. It is democratic.
- mike_hearn 5mo ago
  The EU Councils decisions are taken in secret. You have no idea if it's democratic or not, nor does it matter even if they do hold a vote because by convention none of them ever campaign on the decisions they make there. To see this, try and find out how Ursula von der Leyen ended up the most powerful woman in Europe. What qualified her for that, who were the alternative candidates considered, what was said during the debate and by whom. You can't because the entire process was secret from end to end. Was she even voted on? Nobody knows. Again, the EU is designed to pass itself off as democratic without being so. But so is China.
  - KoolKat23 4mo ago
    As far as I understand the council's votes are made public. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/how-does-the-council-vote/ https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/how-does-the-c... But the European Parliaments votes can be by secret vote, which is bad in my opinion, and ironic considering they're the ones we directly elect.
    - mike_hearn 4mo ago
      Ah but look closely at those votes - do you see anything strange about them? Anything at odds with the idea that they are being cast by directly elected heads of government based on national policy programmes? Edit: Nevermind, I'll be more direct. What you linked to isn't the European Council that has elected heads of state in it. It's the votes of the Council of the European Union. Yes, this naming choice is astoundingly stupid, and because it's never been fixed despite many decades of confusion there are many who speculate the confusion is deliberate. It creates exactly the kind of false appearance of democracy that's tripped you up here. The European Council, the one with Macron, Merz, etc in it, doesn't publish anything about their decision making process. There probably aren't votes. They don't approve or disapprove laws, either. Officially they decide things by consensus. Unofficially nobody knows because they all swear each other to secrecy. The laws are approved by the Council of the European Union who are, theoretically, still ministers from the different governments i.e. a vote on a trade law would have trade ministers. In reality, that's not how it works either. You can easily verify it. Here's a random law that got approved recently by the 'democratic' parts of the system, on "the welfare of dogs and cats and their traceability": https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9729-2026-INIT/en/pdf https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9729-2026-I... Obvious questions one might ask include: 1. Why does dog welfare have to be imposed on members via transnational law they can't change? 2. Why are nearly all the votes of the Council passing with 95%+ support, all the time? Aren't they supposed to be from different political parties in different countries? 3. Is it really plausible that elected trade ministers from all over Europe travelled somewhere, met and had a meaningful debate about dog welfare? The answers are respectively: 1. It doesn't and shouldn't. 2. Because they aren't real votes. 3. https://agenceurope.eu/en/bulletin/article/13873/27/eu-council-adopts-new-regulation-on-welfare-of-cats-and-dogs https://agenceurope.eu/en/bulletin/article/13873/27/eu-counc... says "The EU Council adopted the regulation ... without debate." (note the same naming confusion in the EU's own websites - they use "EU Council" to mean the body that approves laws, which isn't the body made up of heads of state that calls itself the European Council). This law was waved through by some low level civil servants on behalf of the ministers. Probably neither group even read it. As is true for almost all EU law: most of the work is done by lobbyists. So, when people tell you the EU is a democracy because of the Council, think about that. Or just ask them which council they mean, because they probably don't know themselves. Fun fact: there's also the Council of Europe which isn't connected to the EU at all.
M95D 5mo ago
> The EU Parliament cannot pass, change or repeal laws. I suggest you verify that.
- mike_hearn 5mo ago
  It's a constitutional fact. The most they can do is propose amendments to laws proposed by the Commission, but the Commission drives the whole process and isn't required to accept them (worst case, they just cancel the law and then try again later). There is literally nobody you can vote for to if you want to repeal the DMA.
  - M95D 5mo ago
    I had the impression they can amend and repeal them. I was wrong.
    - mike_hearn 4mo ago
      No worries. It's called a Parliament despite not being one by the definition of the word, specifically to create this confusion.

KoolKat23 5mo ago

If it's not in the EU parliaments jurisdiction, it's in the EU council's. As a rule, all members states have to be democratic and you can simply vote out your EU council member i.e. your head of state. It is democratic.

mike_hearn 5mo ago
The EU Councils decisions are taken in secret. You have no idea if it's democratic or not, nor does it matter even if they do hold a vote because by convention none of them ever campaign on the decisions they make there. To see this, try and find out how Ursula von der Leyen ended up the most powerful woman in Europe. What qualified her for that, who were the alternative candidates considered, what was said during the debate and by whom. You can't because the entire process was secret from end to end. Was she even voted on? Nobody knows. Again, the EU is designed to pass itself off as democratic without being so. But so is China.
- KoolKat23 4mo ago
  As far as I understand the council's votes are made public. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/how-does-the-council-vote/ https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/how-does-the-c... But the European Parliaments votes can be by secret vote, which is bad in my opinion, and ironic considering they're the ones we directly elect.
  - mike_hearn 4mo ago
    Ah but look closely at those votes - do you see anything strange about them? Anything at odds with the idea that they are being cast by directly elected heads of government based on national policy programmes? Edit: Nevermind, I'll be more direct. What you linked to isn't the European Council that has elected heads of state in it. It's the votes of the Council of the European Union. Yes, this naming choice is astoundingly stupid, and because it's never been fixed despite many decades of confusion there are many who speculate the confusion is deliberate. It creates exactly the kind of false appearance of democracy that's tripped you up here. The European Council, the one with Macron, Merz, etc in it, doesn't publish anything about their decision making process. There probably aren't votes. They don't approve or disapprove laws, either. Officially they decide things by consensus. Unofficially nobody knows because they all swear each other to secrecy. The laws are approved by the Council of the European Union who are, theoretically, still ministers from the different governments i.e. a vote on a trade law would have trade ministers. In reality, that's not how it works either. You can easily verify it. Here's a random law that got approved recently by the 'democratic' parts of the system, on "the welfare of dogs and cats and their traceability": https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9729-2026-INIT/en/pdf https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9729-2026-I... Obvious questions one might ask include: 1. Why does dog welfare have to be imposed on members via transnational law they can't change? 2. Why are nearly all the votes of the Council passing with 95%+ support, all the time? Aren't they supposed to be from different political parties in different countries? 3. Is it really plausible that elected trade ministers from all over Europe travelled somewhere, met and had a meaningful debate about dog welfare? The answers are respectively: 1. It doesn't and shouldn't. 2. Because they aren't real votes. 3. https://agenceurope.eu/en/bulletin/article/13873/27/eu-council-adopts-new-regulation-on-welfare-of-cats-and-dogs https://agenceurope.eu/en/bulletin/article/13873/27/eu-counc... says "The EU Council adopted the regulation ... without debate." (note the same naming confusion in the EU's own websites - they use "EU Council" to mean the body that approves laws, which isn't the body made up of heads of state that calls itself the European Council). This law was waved through by some low level civil servants on behalf of the ministers. Probably neither group even read it. As is true for almost all EU law: most of the work is done by lobbyists. So, when people tell you the EU is a democracy because of the Council, think about that. Or just ask them which council they mean, because they probably don't know themselves. Fun fact: there's also the Council of Europe which isn't connected to the EU at all.

M95D 5mo ago

> The EU Parliament cannot pass, change or repeal laws. I suggest you verify that.

mike_hearn 5mo ago
It's a constitutional fact. The most they can do is propose amendments to laws proposed by the Commission, but the Commission drives the whole process and isn't required to accept them (worst case, they just cancel the law and then try again later). There is literally nobody you can vote for to if you want to repeal the DMA.
- M95D 5mo ago
  I had the impression they can amend and repeal them. I was wrong.
  - mike_hearn 4mo ago
    No worries. It's called a Parliament despite not being one by the definition of the word, specifically to create this confusion.