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
???
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.