I don't think it's fair to blame the voters. If there were influential elections that nobody was voting in, then a few hardcore members of the electorate would see the potential and be all over them.

It seems much more likely that the voters are correctly detecting that the elections are not that important, either because the parliament has insufficient influence on EU policy, or because the candidates have insufficient influence on the parliament's decisions, or because the parties are all as bad as each other.

Apathy is indeed a problem, and the EU would obviously love higher turnout.

Using it as an argument against the EU is kinda circular, though. Only people who show up should et to complain.

Odd isn't it. In the UK, people are so apathetic about the EU that they won't bother voting and so exercised by the EU that they want to leave.

Why would you vote for an organisation you never wanted to be a part of in the first place? How does exercising your right to vote (or not) indicate that? Wanting to leave and voting are separate, but coupled, factors.

I always have voted out of duty as a citizen to vote, but it always felt like a waste of time. The MEPs are unknowns you never see, and the proceedings are so divorced from regular politics that they seem like they serve little practical purpose in representing our views. Particularly when the people you are voting for are then members of supranational blocs with their own agendas. It's so far removed from the individual voter that it seems like they could do whatever they wanted and claim a mandate for it. I don't think democracy is particularly effective at this scale.

Exactly. Either the EU is powerful and infringing on people's lives, but then it must be important. Or it's irrelevant and unimportant, but then it's not a threat. Yet the Brexit "sovereignty" argument is often reiterated alongside the complaint that the EU doesn't actually do anything.

I think it's a little more complicated than people not being bothered to vote. The European Parliament has relatively little power (e.g. to propose new laws) compared to a typical national parliament. I think people see that and also see that Euroskeptic MEPs are largely ignored. In the last UK European elections, UKIP won the most seats. That didn't get reflected in any shift in policy did it?

UKIP MEPs rather famously don't bother to vote in the EP as much as other MEPs.

Fair point but do you think it would make any difference?

Any? Certainly. How much I would not want to say — my opinion is that UKIP created the dissatisfaction that they fed upon for votes. But that's just opinion.

I think it's unlikely that members skeptical of the institution itself would have much influence.

I think the Leavers were dissatisfied from the beginning. You can directly trace the formation of UKIP from the Maastricht Rebels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastricht_Rebels in the Major government.

UKIP was formed out of protest at what they saw as the EU going off in a highly political direction (i.e. becoming a lot more than just an economic area).

They may be wrong but the objections are based on fundamentals.

Those skeptics certainly started skeptical, but they were also a tiny minority. I was thinking about the people who they convinced to side with them, and how UKIP's refusal to participate in any meaningful way may have created the evidence they needed to convince people the EU wasn't listening.

The EU might have retained popular respect with UK voters if the MEPs that the UK sent to parliament had voted in accordance with their electorate's desires rather than not-voted-because-they-are-a-protest.

Or not. Quite a lot of stuff in the media that is anti-EU, too. That might be more powerful.

I just don't think many people in the UK in general (not just Parliament and the media) like the EU. I spoke to a lot of people who voiced anti-EU sentiment but voted Remain out of fear of the consequences. I remember there being just as much if not more dislike in the early 90's after Black Wednesday.

I'm not sure what you mean by a tiny minority. IIRC the UK Parliament voted against Maastricht twice and it went through on the third attempt. I think UKIP has exploited and perhaps stoked the skepticism, but IMO did not create it.

Certainly — if it had been actively liked then the vote might have gone the other way.

As for polling, it looks like my memory doesn't quite match reality: http://theconversation.com/polling-history-40-years-of-briti...

This polling history shows wild oscillation over time, and the EU was formed from its predecessor just as things were close. I had been under the impression it was a gradual shift from the high of 1979 to the low of 2016.

Regardless, "stoked" sounds like a good description of UKIP's behaviour to me, so I think we may be agreeing with each other.

Agreed and thanks for the link.

As I understand it you're saying "the EU is undemocratic because we don't want to participate in its most direct democratic process".

Do I need to point out why that argument is flawed?

No. People see the EU as undemocratic because Parliament is neither the main policy-making body nor the main executive power. It is more of a supervisory body, akin to the role of Congress or the House of Lords. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament#Control_of...

And the reason it is is that they don't want their own democratically elected governments to lose sovereignty. If you give the EU parliament more power, the national parliaments must lose power.

I don't see how one is more democratic than the other.

I'm saying that the EU is not sufficiently democratic because its executive bodies are not elected by the people whereas in national parliaments they are.

I'm not saying that national governments should give up sovereignty. I'm saying that what powers the EU already has should be more directly democratic.

So you're saying the only valid democracy is one where every body of government is directly elected. Got it.

Yes but mainly the executive parts. No doubt the UK government could be more democratic but however imperfect it is why would you want to layer something on top of it that is even less democratic?

Sorry, I missed the bit where the Council doesn't consist of the democratically heads of states of the member nations (or their individually appointed delegates).

If your country's Council member doesn't represent your interests, that's not the EU's fault, that's your government's fault.

Literally every person who gets to do anything in the EU Parliament, Commission or Council is ultimately in that position because of a democratic election in that member nation -- be it via the direct vote for the Parliament, the national election for the head of state or the combination of those two for the Commission.

The EU isn't full of corporate cronies because the EU sucks. The EU is full of corporate cronies because the member nations' governments suck. And that includes the UK (which in the EU has been at the forefront of various things people like to complain about -- including in the UK itself).

Let's caricature this a little bit: suppose it were a rule of the EU that each national government had to appoint half a dozen people to receive a million-euro salary straight from EU funds (that means, of course, from funds that ultimately the member states paid into the EU budget themselves) for doing nothing.

Even assuming the citizens of member states were fully conscious that this was happening, who do you think would be appointed to those positions? Who would you say sucks in this scenario, the member state governments or the EU?

I'd assume the government should take full responsibility for who it appoints to receive the subsidies and what they do with them.

But we're not talking about slush funds for doing nothing, we're talking about who makes policy. And funnily enough in Westminster we also have a Cabinet and PM setting the policy agenda that are chosen not by some universal franchise but nominated by the representatives of different localities. The transfer of executive power from the MP for Witney to the MP for Maidenhead happened without the involvement of a single person outside the political class, and I didn't vote for any of the Bill Select Committees proposing new legislation or any of the individuals heading up any of the departments responsible for implementing it. And so yeah, I'm holding Conservative MPs rather than the public or the drafters of Britain's constitution responsible for how Brexit gets implemented

Weirdly, few of the people insisting that the UK must leave because of the terrible system of government the EU has are remotely bothered about similar democratic deficits in Westminster.

Most of the tangible criticism/drama about the EU I've seen in UK media is actually about things people UK citizens or the UK government elected or otherwise put into those positions.

The UK was a major driving force behind many of the international trade agreements that are being criticised for infringing on the rights of EU citizens, for example.

Can you substantiate that?