I always vote in the EP election.
I just find it incredible that when the results are in the people at the top are some guys I've never heard or seen before. And I don't believe I'm uncommonly ill-infomed.
Moving power further away from the electorate should be a last resort for issues that can simply not be handled on the local level.
that may happen when many separate countries merge their candidate pools to form a single parliament, and its up to the parties to distribute their seats - I would think that an exact representation of members from all countries within the available seats for the party would be hard to achieve, though.
> Moving power further away from the electorate should be a last resort for issues that can simply not be handled on the local level.
This is true to some extend, however you have to somehow ensure that all individual pieces work in a collaborative mode and support each other, because once you get in competitive mode, its a race to the bottom for everyone.
I don't understand / buy that argument. I find it quite neo-liberal in the sense that it assumes countries will deterministically mindlessly engage in a race to the bottom.
The "prisoners dilemma" is a problem of course. But people and countries can and do cooperate despite that.
For this reason, it's not clear to me that EU countries would automatically slash their environment regulations and corruption prevention efforts in a "race to the bottom" if the EU wasn't there stopping them.
EP elections are well publicized and every EU citizen has the right to vote on it
"Every five years EU citizens choose who represents them in the European Parliament, the directly-elected institution that defends their interests in the EU decision-making process. The next European elections will take place in 2024."