It would be nice if they had to justify their existence much like those in academia.

This is a just title. German parliament also has multiple "Bundestagsvizeprädsidenten", theoretically one parliament vice president for each faction.

It's not just a title. The committee has to decide on agenda and other aspects in some consensus reflecting the parliament, ensuring that minorities are heard at that level. Where the committee doesn't find agreement on procedure they got to make a vote by full parliament, which distracts from actual work.

Regarding Germany, which I know better than EU: Also mind that the parliament is self-governing and the vice presidents deal with a ton of adminsitrative tasks. From parliament police (Bundestagspolizei) to building construction and maintenance and employment of Parliament staff. Not forgetting representative tasks, like visiting opening sessions of parliaments in other countries etc. and then the actual work in leading the debates and on the side also policy work. It's serious work.

It's a general comment about governments and bureaucracy.

General comments tend to paint the world in a stereotypical too broad way that doesn’t reflect reality. They are often misleading and wrong.

Clarifying the reason for something is the antidote to that. And you don’t get to weasel out of that by saying you were making a more general point with your specific statement.

In this case: presidents in typical European parliaments are responsible for parliamentary proceedings. Who speaks when, what the rules of the debate are, how to resolve conflicts, etc. Mostly boring stuff, but stuff that is vitally important for functioning parliaments. They also actually chair the debate, so they are the ones who do the timekeeping and remind MEPs of that and they are the ones handing out sanctions if, I don’t know, someone makes antisemitic remarks about another MEP or something.

Since they set the rules for debate it is also typical that all political factions are in some way represented since this is a function where everyone should be represented. Bonus: since they chair the actual debates one person can‘t shoulder that.

So nothing to do with bureaucracy and everything to do with basic democratic principles.

Is it? I think it's far more common for private companies to have a large number of people titled "Vice President" than governments. As far as governments go, the EU Parliament seems like a bit of an outlier here.

One pays taxes, the other is paid by taxes. I'm not disagreeing with your statement, I just think they're currently/contextually dissimilar.

> One pays taxes, the other is paid by taxes.

Well, sometimes.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-20/amazon-eu...

"Amazon.com Inc.’s main European retail business reported 1.16 billion euros ($1.26 billion) of losses in 2021, which allowed the company to pay no income tax and receive 1 billion euros in tax credits, corporate filings seen by Bloomberg show."

Maybe so, but individuals who are salaried, will pay taxes.

Individuals are just company’s resource, like hardware, or IP. They are not the company itself.

Not exactly relevant. However, a company does not exist without people.

It doesn’t exist without other resources either. What I’m trying to say is, “companies are people” is not true - decisions made by companies are not the decisions it’s employees would normally make if they were not selected - or forced by circumstances - to be aligned with company goals instead of human goals.

> “companies are people” is not true

`Citizens United` was a mistake yes.

Citizens United doesn't matter. What matters is that companies are vastly privileged compared to humans, eg they don't bear criminal responsibility for anything.

They could, it's just more of a DIY situation.

That’ll include parliamentary VPs.

Yes, but they are also paid by taxes, and they hardly are going to pay the entirety of their salary in taxes.

I'm pretty sure government officials still have to pay taxes too

the european parliament exists for the sole purpose of making the EU appear to be democratic

whereas in reality it's the only parliament in the world that can't legislate

This is not true

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_legislative_p...

if you actually read your own page you'll see what I wrote was correct

> the European Commission retains the sole power of legislative initiative.

personally I used to be pro-EU

then I made the mistake of digging into how it actually works

A) The EU is democratic, and B) your second point is also factually incorrect. Good try, though, I guess.