In Germany she's well known for nepotism and corruptness, even if until this day she successfully evaded the punishment. Not long ago there's been a claim that her phone contains important evidence in support of the accusation, but it turned out that data on the phone had been "accidentally" wiped.
As a German this is not "well known" to me, do you have a source?
Until now I thought one Accenture manager was the godfather of a child of a deparment manager in the ministry of defence and Accenture got an consulting gig? I didn't know until now she was giving jobs to her relatives.
But more importantly, the people working for her on the government side were often super close to the consultants they hired. As the minister, she takes responsibility for what is going on in her ministry - and that was full of friends giving contracts to friends.
But anyway, I think the point is still a fair one. Major portions of her thesis were plagiarized. Even if it was an accident (I don't see how that would be possible), the least thesis should be revoked or all students should be allowed to plagiarize their theses as well.
Being part of a rich and powerful family does not make one bad, using that power to cheat and exploit sure does.
It was a classic non-scandal, with zero convictions or indictments in the end, in stark contrast to the attention it got in the media. Not surprising considering how German journalists tend to dislike conservatives in general and how my countrymen on average lack basic financial education.
Disclaimer: I never voted conservative (CDU) and never will, but as much as I don't like von der Leyen "she's well known for nepotism" is just unfair and untrue.
Are you saying that Blue Chip to Mid Cap Stock Index companies regularly spend > 1B on consulting?
Either way using relativism to minimise a crime is sophistry
"I murdered a few people - the US government kills thousands of people a year in <current war>" - you're still guilty of murder, even if someone is better at the crime than you are.
Again: Although there were a parliamentary investigations, there was no crime. No conviction, no indictment, no charges pressed.
300M € was what was spent on all external consultancies combined. The yearly Bundeswehr budget is 42 bln € [1]. 300M is < 1%.
In 2018, the big four (KPMG, PwC, EY and Deloitte) extracted 650M € from the 30 DAX companies alone. And that is just the auditor segment. This doesn't include the strategic consultancies, IT consultancies or Headhunters.
And it also doesn't include the consultancy subsidiaries of said DAX companies. Speaking of subsidiary consultancies: 2/3 of said 300M € "embazzled Bundeswehr money" were spent on it's own consultancy BDI.
This whole "Affair" just resides on general public resentment of the word "consultant" and the public's inability and unwillingness to calculate or research these numbers themself. Especially as soon as there is a "smoking gun" to find by focusing all efforts on looking the other way, which allows us to create a hoax like this.
[1] German: "Milliarde"
Compared to 650M € and 30 DAX companies, 300M € spent by one single "company" do not sound like peanuts, especially since AFAIK the latter money was only meant for IT services & infrastructure(?)
> 2/3 of said 300M € "embazzled Bundeswehr money" were spent on it's own consultancy BDI.
I suppose you meant BWI, as in https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWI_GmbH ?
I also like to point out that of those political groups that were screaming foul the loudest with regards to the "consultant affair", these were the groups with the least interest in or sympathy to the German military.
Which is adding insult to injury because the whole reason the Bundeswehr has to hike its expenditures on consultants at all is because policies of the last decades, specifically of those groups, left the Bundeswehr one of the least attractive employers in the whole country, especially for seeked after talent.
I'm sorry, the cost/performance ratio makes complete sense.
The Bundeswehr is culturally frowned upon in large parts of our society since at least the 1970s so it is no wonder that policies enacted breathe that spirit.
Thus we are a country whose military openly admits it can't defend the country. For a couple of years now. There is close to zero outcry about that, certainly less outcry than the "Berateraffaire" got.
So clearly she hasn't done a good job
Not saying she did in general, but blaming an army depleted and frowned upon for decades on her six years as Secretary of Defense (SoD) is deceitful (not saying that you do).
On the contrary: Turning this shipwreck around affords even more expenditures. So expect the cost/performance ratio to become even worse.
she's been rewarded with the presidency of the EU, which is corruption in itself.
Since von der Leyen clearly hasn't proved herself to be included in the realms of sinister masterminds (she got ousted from her SoD job for a non-scandal) the curruption-part lies within the EU itself, for nullifing an election result, and how they've chosen her.
If she hired her son directly, or as part of the team, if he was lobbying her, then it's a problem.
But if her son worked at IBM and she, as Defence Minister hired IBM for some defence contract, then it's irrelevant.
Edit: I should be clear, among the elite, specifically if there are central groups which exist especially within EU nations, and also 'bubbles' in the US i.e. Valley, Hollywood, NY Finance etc. it's very common for 'big contracts' to go to so-and-so, and as a 'favour' the so-and-so takes on 'sufficiently credentialed son/daughter'. For example, if you're the top Defence bureaucrat and you hire 'Bain & Co.' to do a procurement analysis ... well ... you're son with a newly minted MBA might find it much easier to get hired there. While this kind of 'soft nepotism' is arguably problematic, it's also not so bad. It's when the 'wife, niece and grandson of the French President' have 'fully paid positions in the bureaucracy' for which they literally do nothing, or when the PM hires his college buddy's law firm for a $100M boondoggle that it gets worse.
This is not corruption, it's just favours.
Nobody is awarding a major contract to get their kid an associate job at McKinsey.
The contract is awarded to McKinsey, if the person holding the purse has someone looking to get into such a role, then it's a nice thing that McKinsey can do in return.
My mother was a director of customer service and used to hire all of my friends in high school ... because they were my friends. It's normal.
It's technically not very above bar, but it's not necessarily corrupt. Most people get jobs through their networks, this is 'kind of' that.
Relevant article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-growing-saudi-business-mckin...
The Saudi government is not giving McKinsey huge contracts because so and so's kid got hired there - point blank.
Also remember these kids are already stinking rich they don't even need to work.
And it's also a part of the world where business is done on the basis of relationships.
When a firm is giving Ferraris as 'kickbacks' then it's corruption but not this.
Hiring less than capable individuals while excluding more capable individuals, for the sake of obtaining contracts, in a region where ministers are changed on a regular basis (hence no guarantees of the connections staying forever) is exactly what I'd call a kickback.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen#Berater-A...
Pushing for something that may be objectively terrible and is agreed by everybody is objectively terrible, may be terrible, but it is still not corrupt.
Words have meanings, and for that to be corrupt it would also require that the person pushing for it was doing so not because they believed it was the right thing to do, but because they were doing it for nefarious reasons such as having been bribed, or only because it would personally enrich themselves.
https://translate.google.com/translate?um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&c...
They're pretty much opposite sides of the political spectrum in UK. Where are they anything other than that?
Basically the most liberal party is for low taxes, for diversity and for secularism. If you want high taxes then you aren't a liberal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_elect...
However they're primarily just groupings of like-minded national parties.
The EU has what's called a "political party at European level", there are 10 of these registered and a few more that don't meet the criteria to register.[0]
Most of these parties - and in particular the biggest two, the EPP[1] and PES[2] - don't allow individuals to become members.
Instead their members are political parties at national and regional parties that already exist in the member states.
One or two of the other parties are built around member states' parties, but also offer individual membership. ALDE,[3] the third-largest party, is one that does.
There are a few more parties that are active but don't meet the criteria to register.
The Pirate Party,[4] already mentioned by others, is one, but that too is a party-of-parties.
Volt Europa[5] is probably the only serious attempt at creating Europarty that is comprised predominantly of individuals, although even they allow for national-level parties as members in their statutes.
What can make things slightly confusing is that in the European Parliament MEPs don't actually formally sit as parties, but rather as political groups, of which there are 7. There are MEPs that don't sit in a group, but these tend to be more fringe parliamentarians, typically on the far-right.
The EPP and PES are big enough to have groups (EPP and S&D, respectively) that are more or less coterminous with their parties, but the other parties work together.
The European Greens sit with the European Free Alliance[6] along with the Pirate Party and Volt Europa, for example.
----------
[0] Regulation 1141/2014 [7] lays down the requirements. Amongst the details of the legal restrictions that have to be adhered to is the requirement to have elected representatives, or achieve 3% in European Parliament elections, in at least 1/4 of the member states.
[1] The European People's Party (EPP), this is the party of both the current Commission President and Merkel: https://www.epp.eu/
[2] The Party of European Socialists: https://www.pes.eu/en/
[4] https://european-pirateparty.eu/
[5] https://www.volteuropa.org/
[6] These are mostly sub-national regionalist and/or separatist parties. https://www.e-f-a.org/
[7] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
Which is mostly a result of Eastern European countries turning outright fascist (Hungary) or religious-authoritarian (Poland), it's a classic game of shifting goalposts.
CDU also was modernized by Merkel after the right-wing conservatives got booted off/sidetracked in the early '00s following a massive donation / tax scandal ("Schreiber-Spendenaffäre") and so the CDU still enjoyed wide popularity as a result, while the Eastern European conservatives never had that push.
> Which is mostly a result of Eastern European countries > turning outright fascist (Hungary) or religious- > authoritarian (Poland), it's a classic game of shifting > goalposts.
You are seriously wrong aka naive or intentionally missing truth.
a) current Hungary and Poland ruling parties just trying to make their countries strong, finish with some colonialism-like practices. Nothing fashist or autoritarism here. b) liberal and socialist (ex commies hire) disqualificate themselves via scams and -gates, stupidity and not doing ANYTHING for their own ppls.
You should better start to be concern about democracy in France (military state by now), Germany (censorship) and Espana (country suicide).
Of course, there are different political ideologies. It's not just a popularity contest.
For some reasons I thought Europe has an aging population issue and demographic decline not overpopulation.
>> families with more than two parents
I never heard of this unless you consider divorced people.
> I never heard of this unless you consider divorced people.
Look for articles concerning co-parenting, that's where its most often discussed. Wikipedia: "Co-parenting is an enterprise undertaken by two or more adults who together take on the socialization, care, and upbringing of children for whom they share equal responsibility[1] Co-parents may include a variety of configurations, including a mother and a father, two mothers, two fathers, a parent with an adult sibling or grandparent, or a parent and another adult relative. The co-parent relationship differs from an intimate relationship between adults in that it focuses solely on the child."
The other typical configuration would be in polyamorous relationships, when more than two of the partners decide to take responsibility of the child. Granted "typical" is a bit of a difficult word when we're talking about niche concepts. Most of my friends and coworkers have never heard about co-parenting or any other of the more diverse and sometimes complex family-alike structures, unless they concern failed relationships (see divorces). Which is kind of a bummer, that only failure in previous relationships motivates them to experiment with other concepts.
I don't think it's worth to mangle obscure/exotic issues with mainstream subjects (overpopulation).
What does this mean? How is alleged population related to family structure and sexual relations?
Regarding overpopulation: One motivation that I've heard quite often is that one of the most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint is to have one child less. This is always presented with the asterisk that this is of course a very personal decision and there is the understanding that this is not a standard under which you will be measured. Still, if you're just looking at the numbers, that's what you get. Sharing parentage with more than two people is an alluring way to achieve the same result, especially as it means you will retain more of your personal time when child care is shouldered by three (or more) people.
I know almost nothing about her but my impression of the actual decision making in the EU is that it's fairly distributed (by design) and there is not a single person which has the power to do anything on their own. Also there are lots of opportunities for various stakeholders to veto decisions.
Are we talking about the same Ursula von der Leyen?
"4. UPCA is violating the “rule of law” (TFEU Art2), the EPO cannot be brought to court for maladministration"
???
That she has her position is the most glaring evidence of 'democratic dysfunction'.
Nobody voted for her, she was unknown before the election. The very few people that voted in the EU elected voted for something else, after the election 'the true powers' decided to push the ostensible candidate aside, and behind closed doors without input from elected MEPs, Von der Leyen was chosen from relative obscurity (at least outside of Germany) - foisted on top to 500 Million electors, almost none of whom have ever even heard of her.
She was not vetted, she did no debates, there was no public coverage, there were no speeches, there was no published platform, there was no campaign agenda.
Just: "Here is your new leader, that you have never heard of , that you have just elected".
This is not democracy.
So perhaps if there were more transparency, or even some of it, you would have been able to vet her, and actually vote for or against her.
What you are complaining about is that she was elected by newly elected representatives, but not directly elected by citizens. I find this to be hairsplitting and meaningless in a context of representative democracy.
That almost nobody voted in the election, that nobody knew who the leader - or the platform - was going to be, and that she was absolutely chosen after the fact, by unelected leaders, that she cannot be sanctioned or replaced, and that elected MEPs cannot propose legislation - is fundamental to the nature of democracy.
Even in proper democracies, particularly in Parliamentary systems, even the budget requires approval without which the government falls and elections are called. Why? Because the proposition of budgets necessitate popular sanction. Parliament - and even legislative assemblies can dissolve government if necessary.
Ursula von der Leyen has unambiguously the least democratic legitimacy of any leader in the free world, by far.
The fact that the EU was purposefully designed this way - in the very face of very healthy democratic institutions i.e. Switzerland, UK, Germany - implies the lack of democracy was very much 'by design'.
It's an existential issue.
People usually vote for parties and the persons within them, not an individual.
But - the party, platforms, PM etc are very transparent, and elections are held on that basis.
If the Conservative Party of the UK ran with B. Johnson and Brexit, but then after the election decided to make some randome guy from Scotland - that nobody ever heard of - the Prime Minister, and said Scot made a 'Throne Speech' with some completely different agenda ...
...there would be a revoluion.
And of course PM has to be someone elected at their riding for good reason.
It's simply not good enough to say 'someone voted somewhere' so therefore 'it's democracy and we can do what we want'.
Consider Socialist Yugoslavia, the main difference between its electoral system and those of non-communist states was the amount of indirection involved.
Also, you ignored the second half of jariel's comment.
This dual identity has been a boon in some political situations in the past, but it is also a serious liability. Von der Leyen got the job in a usual way for a treaty organization, but she is much more political than some technocrat. There are factions that like it each way, and her job is to play both ends against the middle.
You don't need a democratic mandate to appoint the head of a civil service. You definitely do when choosing the leader of the (de facto) government!
It is increasingly clear that we need a supranational organization in Europe which IS a democratic government. Seems like it would be a natural fit for the EU to be that organization... and it looks like it is headed in that direction. That means it's our role as citizens to push for more democratic behavior at every turn.
what? This opinion seems to be highly uninformed about how the EU and it's actual bodies work. i can vote for EU elections and representatives in the european parlement. Also the european commision and the council consist of either parties elected in the national elections, or national leaders themselves. Also, the european parlement uses quantitative representation, which means smaller nations have a larger say compared to larger ones.
>This dual identity has been a boon in some political situations in the past, but it is also a serious liability. Von der Leyen got the job in a usual way for a treaty organization, but she is much more political than some technocrat. There are factions that like it each way, and her job is to play both ends against the middle.
What dual identity? The european community has had a parlement since the 70's, and the european project has been a political union since it's very beginning in the 50's. You seem to assume that van der leyen has vast political power on her own, but the EU is far to decentralized for that. The EU is is a complex political system because it is highly decentralised. (which in terms is happening because all it's members are sovereign).
>You don't need a democratic mandate to appoint the head of a civil service. You definitely do when choosing the leader of the (de facto) government!
This democratic process exists, as explained above. not having direct representation is not the issue here. The way of elections in the EU is roughly the same as what happens in most if not all EU member states. (with the exception of mainly the UK).
" the european commision and the council consist of either parties elected in the national elections"
For lambasting others as uninformed, you should check your facts first. The EU Commission is not made up of elected officials, moreover, the EU has no obligation whatsoever to follow the results of parliamentary elections.
The 'proportional' makeup of the assembly is irrelevant if they are mostly powerless - by far the most powerless legislative assembly in the free world.
" The way of elections in the EU is roughly the same as what happens in most if not all EU member states"
This is really not true. The leaders of various parties, their platforms etc. are all well known during the course of EU member state elections, moreover, EU member state legislative bodies have the power to sanction, remove the executive, and of course to actually legislate.
Edit: EU members states have some of the best and most representative democracies in the world, it's such a blatant contrast at the EU level, it's hard to forgive people for not seeing why things are the way they are.
I'll try to clarify:
The EU in many ways does operate like a government, at least like a confederacy. It has a legislative process, a directly elected parliament, and a president. We get "state of the union" addresses, for crying out loud!
But its founding mission was as an independent third party to oversee coal and steal production. That kind of "referee" role between member states is central to how it is designed, and to much of its action.
Some notable dissimilarities to a democratic government:
- The EU has no constitution; it has treaties. - The EU has no sovereignty; limited powers flow upwards from individual member states. - The EU may only determine matters collectively which need to be determined collectively (principle of subsidiarity) - The only directly elected part of the EU (the EU Parliament) may not propose legislation. It gets to amend, improve, and approve/reject legislation proposed by the (unelected) EU Commission, to implement policy set by the European Council and its (unelected) president. - The "supreme executive" European Council is simply all the national leaders with an appointed head. That's the only source for new policy and leadership decisions. - The EU Commission - the partner body to the EU parliament, is a set of appointees from the EU Council, approved/rejected as a group by the parliament.
The idea behind the setup is to make it easier to propose and ratify multi-lateral treaties with many sides and fixed membership. The directly elected Parliament is a sanity check, not a source of legislation.
To use the US system as analogy because I can assume broad familiarity with it: - the executive branch is all the state governors. They appoint the President. - the senate is made of appointees from the executive branch, approved as a group by the congress. - the house of representatives is directly elected, and can only modify, approve, or reject legislation proposed by the senate.
It is not a controversial opinion to say it is a hybrid system. In fact, from the Wikipedia page on the EU:
"The EU operates through a hybrid system of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making,[132][133] and according to the principles of conferral (which says that it should act only within the limits of the competences conferred on it by the treaties) and of subsidiarity (which says that it should act only where an objective cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states acting alone)."
"Constitutionally, the EU bears some resemblance to both a confederation and a federation, but has not formally defined itself as either... It is more integrated than a traditional confederation of states because the general level of government widely employs qualified majority voting in some decision-making among the member states... It is less integrated than a federal state because it is not a state in its own right."
Also, as evidenced by some of the other responses to my comment, my statement that we need a central political body is a controversial opinion.
Hope this helps. Thanks for the excuse for a Wikipedia dive! You may also be interested in this recent Economist article about some of the problems of the dichotomy: https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/09/03/the-contradictio...
I don't think that's clear at all.
One could very much make the argument that it doesn't need 'governance' it needs 'coordination' which are very different things.
I feel the vast majority of the most important things could be achieved mostly by treaty and that everyone could 'have their cake and eat it' which is to say have fully sovereign states and work together.
I think there's quite a lot of a) ideology in the US of Europe b) it's the natural 'power creep' of any institution and c) the business class love to be able to 'skip democracy' and so do the 'socialist' types - both of whom kind of work in a weird kind of tolerance of one another, with I think the business class mostly in charge.
In particular, the hugely vague mandates on 'Human Rights' are the biggest coup, though the least obvious. They basically give a 'carte blanche' to the EU courts to rule as they see fit, interpreting some basic, bland text to mean whatever they want it to mean.
Since the EU courts often decide on their own jurisdiction ... it results in a huge concentration of legal power.
It's a Judicial takeover.
Something similar happened in Canada - not exactly on purpose - but when Trudeau Sr. introduced a new Constitution into Canada in the early 1980's - it was a 'nice modern document' but obviously vague. Since then, the Supreme Court of Canada has struck down innumerable old laws, new laws, they do it all the time, they even 'change their minds' on things like terminal care and suicide. Because of the vague wording, 'the world's top legal scholars and lawyers' have no clue what legislation is legal or not, it's just a matter of what our 'Tribal Council of Unelected Elders' decide to do. It's resulted in 'Law by Judicial Fiat' for a wide array of issues - all of the most important ones (identity, rights, marriage, abortion). Canadians, elected officials, politicians, the Prime Minister have little say in the matter ... except for this weird clause someone can effect which basically says a 'law is not bound by the constitution' - which is crazy in of itself.
The 'Human Rights' mandates of the EU are controversial for this reason: obviously, they are humane and positive i.e. a 'good thing' - but many people oppose them on the legal problems the effectively create. These people are easily lambasted in the press as 'anti human rights' which is of course completely wrong.
Europeans are quite smart, the lack of understanding of these things is really quite bothersome. People just seem to be happy to do whatever the elite tell them to do.
I think that for meaningful discussion to be possible, you would have to provide a much more specific, concrete example; but that of course runs the risk of being beyond the understanding of us non-lawyers.
[0] Somebody on HN opined that this is because most politicians are lawyers, and they have an interest in preserving/increasing job opportunities for lawyers, or something like that. I wish I could find the comment.
I mean, how many regular people voted for Boris Johnson as PM, for example. The answer is exactly 0.
That's just how parliamentary democracy works.
But the similarities end there.
You've actually provided a specific example - the most recent UK election, which highlights even further the lack of democracy in the EU, which is a 'confidence' election based on some important or existential issue, in that case, Brexit.
+ Voters were very well informed that Boris Johnson was to be the PM if a specific party were elected + They were very aware of the general platform of the parties + They were even more aware that the issue at the crux of the election was the type of resolution towards Brexit. + UK elected MPs have tremendous power - demonstrated in that very case: previous to the election, Boris Johnson faced a kind of censure by Parliament several times, MPs of all stripes voting for and against him. + The UK MPs collectively introduced legislation and forced the hand of government on several occasions. + The government was threatened with dissolution on several occasions, over a very important issue.
None of this happens in the EU, by design.
The EU is not a 'representative democracy' rather, it's a political entity which governs largely unto it's own devices - but in which some actions must have it's actions approved by elected officials.
Von der Leyen, in her first speech talked about her want to create the 'United States of Europe'. Not only does this hint at the Presidential nature of the role, but also points out the problematic issue with 'lack of democracy' in that voters were told after the election that their leader has a plan for 'existential transformation'. This is not what a bureaucrat does.
As a funny example: imagine waking up in Nov. 2016 and being told that the 'US state delegates' had not actually decided to go with 'Mitt Romney', the official candidate, but they 'changed their minds' and went with some 'outsider' from New York named 'Donald Trump'.
All of that said - the EU is actually more thoughtful about tech legislation than the US gov for sure - that said, the EU is for the most part making rules that ostensibly 'protect' them from outside parties, it would be a different story if MS, FB and G were HQ'd in London, Antwerp and Lisbon.
This is what 'United States of Europe' means. The EU has been on a course to more democracy and more power for the parliament (e.g. Treaty of Lisbon), so I'm not sure why people assume this stops, argue that it is not happening or argue that it is reversing - when it is not - e.g. see GDPR.
"When 'one day' it's presedential it will be voted for by the European parliament."
And who will propose and design the legislation?
The Executive!
Definitely not elected MEPs, because they are barred from doing so!
MEP's, in 2020 remain forbidden from initiating or enacting legislation. They have the bare minimum power to legitimize the institution as 'democratic'.
The EU is the only 'Constitutional Democratic' entity in the modern world wherein legislation is created and controlled at the executive level.
You might technically be correct in asserting that the MEPs have 'more power' after the Lisbon treaty, very little has changed, and there is no reason for them to change it.
Not until the Treaty of Lisbon were elected MEPs even required to be consulted (!!) for the selection of the executive! Constitutionally they were irrelevant. Only since the Lisbon treaty do MEPs technically have to be consulted, and even then, it's merely 'consultation'. It's not binding.
Never in the history of the world has power been given to the people unless they have basically 'forced' it, by using one lever of power or another.
The EU is very well designed by the elite to avoid populism and 'interference' by organized or populist plebes.
It's the perfect mechanism to have control and enact legislation with minimum of oversight, minimum of media coverage, minimum of procedural problems from the plebes.
The elite can argue, but only among themselves.
The EU has negative incentive to add more democratic oversight, because in their view, it just adds more problems and risk to the situation - god forbid a 'Donald Trump' should be elected in Europe.
The only way voters will get more power is if they take it, either through MEP insurrection, or, one or two state powers have some kind of reason to push for it. I don't think either of these cases is on the table, I can't even imagine a scenario will happen.
So if 'the entire history of civilization' is a guide, there will be net less democracy in Europe, as they give very little power to MEPs, and move more powers away from national assemblies towards the EU, where unelected bureaucrats and members of the inner circle can do 'what they think is best'.
And there's nothing anyone can do about it.
As for GDPR, yes, it was nice that MEPs could put up a fuss and have some parts of legislation changed, but they were not the shepherds of this legislation by any means, it was written and controlled 'from above' at all times.
FYI here is the original draft from 2012 [1]
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20121203024154/http://ec.europa....
In this particular file of the UPCA, Ministers have a direct conflict of interests, as their ministries would get money for the renewal fees of the Unitary Patent.
the entire project is about centralising executive power, which necessitates removing it from national legislatures
the council then ignored that completely and installed their own choice
So we have two, black lists for websites and spending millions on consultants while choosing Accenture and McKinsey instead of some other charlatans. The problem here is obviously not how the companies were chosen but that millions were given to consulting companies with no clue. I might add "throwing away a rather good gun" - others would debate this. So we might have three. Lots of? And I'd only really consider black lists as "dumb shit" but YMMV.
But we may vary on "lots of". If someone says "I have lots of beer at home" I would be rather dissapointed if in the end it were three beer (1.5 for each of us! ;-)
Not ten, but these immediately come to mind.
However, there was no evidence of fraud, merely sloppiness, and she got to keep her 'Dr. med'.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen#Plagiate_...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grossgliederung_Europas-e...
I think Frans Timmermans (an excellent option!) had a chance to win it before that, as well as Vestager (the antitrust champion in the previous EC). They gave Vestager the VP job to pacify her and her allies.
Also, somehow, Vera Jourova, which has been absolutely terrible in her job in the previous EC, especially with the terrible Privacy Shield she negotiated with the US gov (which has now been invalidated - again - by the CJEU) got the VP role, too, in the new EC.
Germans need to get rid of Merkel already. She's been terrible in the past 2 mandates, even doing stuff like protecting the coal industry as as well the diesel/gasoline car industry against new EU pollution norms. She also continued to push for new mass surveillance laws, even as the previous ones were being declared unconstitutional by the German courts.
I'm almost convinced the only reason she won again last time was because the US/global media kept propping her up as the "world's savior against Trump" - whatever that means. So I'm sure that had an effect at home, too, possibly giving her the edge. I know she was starting to be hated due to the all the local immigration issues prior to that.
Officially she is in a conservative party, which eastern European countries liked very much.
If we want to take democracy seriously, we would need a common language or at least a common media landscape. We could just use US media of course. They have the opposite problem that everyone understands what they are saying.