Can we not just discount the issues with china then as well?
I think the one big difference here is that nobody expects china to invade their country, violate human rights within their own country or put pressure on their local politics for various reasons (other than random trade agreements maybe).
All things nearly everyone pretty much expects from the U.S. at this point.
But if you think China doesn't exert pressure in other countries' politics you haven't spent much time in Asia, particularly SE Asia.
That's one of the component that's given the US a lot of influence and power dealing with the world. This was aided by how inward the competing powers were.
There's been a backlash against those ideas as foreign policy both inside and outside the US. As evidenced by the current president.
It's my hunch that in the long run the US will miss the privilege and benefits that have come from that asymmetric relationship. 4 or 8 years can be a long time and a lot can happen when were standing still.
Just look at England, they've never fully come to grips that the sun has set on the English empire.
Now, instead, it's China, and we're still not getting anywhere.
I'd rather fight with the other european countries over such small details than live in a world ruled by an autocratic China.
Most of the people being against the EU are against it because they only ever hear the bad sides? They never realize that most of the bad things "the EU" did were actually things the council did. Which actually just means that the heads of states of all EU nations agreed on it. If you end the EU, all power goes to these negotiations, and you'll only see that bullshit.
In turn, almost all the advances in civil rights that the EU courts and parliament have given us is attributed by the media to the national governments.
Start off with replacing this propaganda, and you'll have broad support for the EU very soon.
It sounds like you just want to substitute another set of propaganda .
Many people were quite happy to establish a European Common Market.
Few had a direct input to moving that to Union.
So first you'd need to turn the clock back 40 years and explain why anything deeper than a market is necessary.
I think that’s pretty obvious, when you’re trying to compete with China or the US head-on, isn’t it?
Do you really think "just a market" of european nations will ever be able to stand alone on the world stage, being able to negotiate on eye level with another superpower?
Do you think we will be able to get our own Silicon Valley ever, when startups have to deal with 28 tax laws, 28 consumer laws, 28 different languages, 28 different regulations for everything? No European startup has ever actually managed that. They always first expand in their home country, and then to the US or China – the largest unified markets with unified laws and unified languages, where they can grow better. And companies starting in those markets always have an advantage.
Do you think in "just a market", our legislatives and executives would ever have been able to regulate companies as large as Google? Companies so large that if you ban them from your country, half your country’s productivity is lost over night? If you try to regulate them when you’re just Denmark, Google will just stop running in your country. No European country alone would be powerful enough to regulate such large multinationals anymore. Only together are we large enough that these multinationals have to cave.
Do you think negotiating a separate treaty for each of the things we currently do via EU law would be better? Treaties take years to negotiate, and will run for decades. You can’t just replace them, or change them. On the other hand, every 4 years we can just replace all EU institutions, and the parliamentarians, and change policy. This allows a much more democratic decision process.
That aside: It isn't undemocratic to not do a ballot. In a parliamentary democracy parliaments can decide most things themselves (even all, depending on the country). That's what they get elected for in the first place.
After the No vote, the government made a much larger effort to explain to the public what Lisbon did and they got guarantees from the EU as to interpretation of wording.
I think you could kuschku's suggestion that you need to get the population of each state on board before progressing. The turnout for the 2nd vote on Lisbon (which was a yes) went up to 59% from 53%. Looking at the vote from outside, it definitely seemed like people were much more engaged in the second vote than they were in the first.
I don't know why repeated votes would be undemocratic. There is absolutely no suggestion that the second vote was fraudulent. You're allowed to ask the same question of the population again once more information is available.
If you really object to a federal Europe that much, I suggest you offer a better solution for how Europe can compete on the world stage with China and the US in the future, and do so successfully.
US' track record isn't stellar, especially over the past 2 decades, and in the past decade the US has also taken a backseat in terms of actually protecting humans rights, even during Obama's time, but at least if you discount US' human rights violations in the Middle East, the US has been rather neutral on human rights (read: not positive) elsewhere. China may actually turn things to a negative trend for human rights everywhere else.
The UK under David Cameron had already started to use China as a role model for domestic censorship and surveillance. If China's influence grows, I imagine many other countries will follow UK's lead.