However I agree that EU can also be used as a scapegoat when implementing unpopular policies, unfortunately. They can claim that they totally didn't want it but EU mede them accept it.
Suddenly you decide that you want to collect all the private data online and sell it to the highest bidder? Decided that cancerogenic chemicals in the food are cool? It’s not going to happen fast.
It's more like a club where the countries come together to decide how to do things and then they implement local laws to do it. They are not hostile countries brought together by force, the hostilities are usually between neighbours and EU acts as a way to resolve them. For example, countries close to the borders see large refugee influx and the countries further away don't want to have anything to do with that and EU tries to find a way to ease the pressure on the border countries(so far, not very successfully but managed to create a mechanism of keeping refugees outside of EU by paying the host countries like Turkey). Or let's say a country wants to join EU, an EU country might have long standing disputes and EU tries to find a common ground to mediate it(Bulgaria & Northern Macedonia is a vivid recent example). Or let's say there's ethnic issues causing wars and other tragedies, EU creates a law to guarantee the rights of the minorities so that the ethnic issues are no longer relevant those resolved.
For example, let's say Poland agreed to GDPR but they went ahead and made itself a hub for data brokers with no respect to GDPR, then Poland gets sued and funds cut. Poland doesn't get sued or funds cut if they voted against GDPR and blocking it in first place.
They do not answer to anyone and they collude with lobby organizations to push an agenda. This is the far from being a democratic process.
When you say it like "they are not elected but appointed", you make it sound like some 3rd party is appointing them and you have no power on it but those who appoint the members of EC are the members of EP(elected every 5 years) and the national governments(elected accordingly to the local laws).
If you you want to make it sound undemocratic, you can say that the US president is elected by the electoral college and citizens of the USA have no way to vote for their president.
If you like to argue over technicalities, we can do that.
There are dictators elsewhere, should I have one at home too?
In my book an elected official is someone who was voted in office. If you are not elected then you are appointed. If you are appointed you do not need to be accountable because the people cannot revoke your mandate nor can they vote you out.
To me it seems inconceivable that someone who was appointed can decide to bring forward such a law and not have to defend it.
However it's not O.K. to go around claim that those people are appointees of 3rd parties and are agents of companies and rule with impunity and the EU citizens can't do anything about it. It's a misrepresentation of the reality.
It's like claiming that British PM and the US president are not elected. While technically true, it misrepresent the democratic system.
The exact distribution of responsibilities of the EC and who is to lead the commission is determined through international diplomacy.
Sure, the democratically elected parliament can veto the commission. But not propose a new one.
To even start comparing it with elections for US president and British PM is disingenuous at best.
The commission is appointed by the European council (i.e. prime ministers and presidents of the member states) and approved by the parliament (your directly elected representatives).
They _should_ absolutely be held accountable in the same way we hold ministers accountable in the member states.
In a parliamentary system (ie most countries in the EU) members of parliament are elected. Parliament appoints a premier. Premier appoints ministers with parliamentary approval.
EU commissioners are nominated by the member states subject to their own laws. Typically that means they are chosen by your elected government.
If you want a directly elected commissioner that’s a matter of national politics. Your country is free to change its laws to select a commission nominee via a national vote.
I want a directly elected Commission. The same system would suffice - chosen by the elected parliament among its members.
The commission has to defend their suggestions or they won't make it through council and parliament. And if an individual commissioner is only delivering suggestions that get voted down, they're not likely to get reappointed.
Is there room for improvement? Sure. Is this specific suggestion a complete piece of trash? Sure. Will that be different if we have some kind of presidential election on the EU level? Not so sure.
Just like with the migrant quotas that Hungary and Poland are boycotting. Meanwhile, the far right gets more votes because people are fed up with this BS and naïve enough to vote for them.
Most elected position have an unrevokable mandate, unelected positions are typically easier to revoke.
> If you are appointed you do not need to be accountable
They need to be accountable to who can revoke their position, which is generally elected officials.
I am not defending the EU here, I am not well informed enough in that regard; I am just criticizing the false dycothomy of elected/appointed when electoral systems create a much bigger variance of effects.
It can and has fired the entire Commission in the past, and it must approve EU legislation.
Much more fun to subscribe to a conspiracy theory about all-powerful people behind the curtain though.
Yes; it is true that the Constitution provides for the election of electors, who will then choose the President.
But in fact, while the Electoral College makes the precise mechanism of election slightly indirect and the methods of weighting the votes byzantine, in any practical sense there's no question that the US president is elected, and not appointed.
Many important EU figures have been elected repeatedly for national parliaments, as national ministers or for leadership positions in major national political parties, and only after that got an EU job.
I think it's by design: The jobs are put together as a nationally/politically balanced team, picked from from a large set of candidates who have generally been accepted by national voters over a period of time.
The more indirect the method is, the more control shifts from voters to lobbyists and insiders versed in the system.
How many businessmen you see going around and promoting EU? if it’s that easy to influence they should love it.
Here’s a quote from Anthony Hilton about the media magnate Murdock:
I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. ‘That’s easy,’ he replied. ‘When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.’”
The executive (governments) should not become legislators, under the principle of seperation of powers of Montesquieu.
What if Montesquieu was just wrong and systems with fused or subordinated executive and legislative powers actually just work better in pretty much every way that separation-of-powers systems?
Yeah, the US unusually strongly applies Montesquieu in its Constitutional design, but the US isn't particularly well-governed among modern democracies. (Personally, I think the dominance of poor electoral methods and the resulting partisan duopoly is a bigger effect than separation of powers here, but...)
Many dictators were democratly elected.
I have the impression that this is often the case: EC members are recruited from members of national parliament, ministers and people who stepped down from either of those recently.
So technically you're correct, she's not elected. But she got the job by being elected.
That may explain why she is interested in bringing this legislation forward. I think privacy is not at the forefront of preoccupations for communists.
Anyway, my point is that she's been repeatedly elected. She didn't get her present job in an election, but someone who's won three elections in a row recently is democratically legitimate, even if the current job isn't directly elected.
It would be just as false as saying "rdm_blackhole supports decriminalising incitement because he supports free speech".
There is no false equivalency whatsoever here.
The Soviet one spied on everyone. The Swedish one was spied upon. That's not equivalent.
This is relevant as the Social Democrats are pro chat control, while the Left Party is against chat control.
They are not just "appointed", all the elected MPs get together and have a popularity contest as to who is going to represent them. That's all the PM does, they are not the head of state.
She is closer to the House of Lords, where people can suggest bills, and no one votes for them and even if they decide to be evil, it's virtually impossible for the people to remove them.
The House of Lords is also a terrible institution that is designed to remove power from those who vote.
We do not vote on individuals, but on a group at election time. That group is democratically elected, and within that group the leader is democratically elected by its party members (whoever wishes to join).
The EU by definition is anti-democractic (any centralization of power without accountability results in loss of democractic influence). The most important thing to understand is that the public do not have the same level of influence on the direction of the EU that say the public has in in the UK. With that said, the position of the UK and its dealings is irrelevant to the matter at hand. If we are are discussing an anti-democractic group we don't make it democractic by finding someone equally or more so anti-democratic.
What makes you think that your country’s politicians don’t want that but some people in Brussels are forcing it?
Those people in Brussels are just people from all the countries, including yours. You also vote them in.
The desire of governments controlling the population is universal.