No, they are voted on by elected representatives.
They must be proposed by the commission, which is not elected but appointed.
The commission is appointed by directly elected governments. It's the same as any ministerial post in any government.
It's also the same level of indirection as the US presidency, which is appointed by the Electoral College.
Oh no! Someone pointed out an inconvenient fact again!
> It's also the same level of indirection as the US presidency, which is appointed by the Electoral College.
But the US President doesn't have a monopoly on setting the agenda of Congress, the Commission does with respect to the EU Parliament. Anyone with any political awareness knows that if you set the agenda you control the outcome.
The US president can't propose laws, only Congress can, yet he can "set the agenda".
Only the EU Commission can propose laws, but the EU Council (composed of the heads of state or of government of the EU member states) sets the agenda.
"The European Council is a collegiate body and a symbolic collective head of state, that defines the overall political direction and general priorities of the European Union."
They are functionally equivalent.
Fantastic example of unintentional scare quotes.
> Only the EU Commission can propose laws, but the EU Council (composed of the heads of state or of government of the EU member states) sets the agenda.
Who has to nominate all the possible members of the EU Commission? Is it the EU Council?
Face it, the entire EU structure is designed to prevent little people from ever being able to get a law passed which would possibly benefit them except as populist measures inside the EU which stick it to the evil Americans again to promote internal support for the EU.
> Face it...
Beaten by the facts, you just move on to more vague and hateful nonsense. The EU is not the US. The EU is not a vassal state of the US, it will make its own determinations and punish whoever breaks laws within the EU.
US companies don't have to like it, they can leave. The US wouldn't EU companies breaking US laws so this is all just rank hypocrisy and bigotry.
Long windedly confirming exactly what I said while attempting to obfuscate the reality. You aren't appointing anyone to the European Commission that didn't get nominated via the European Council, which is the heads of states, and the resulting people then write the laws voted on by the European Parliament.
Unsurprisingly this leads to enormous bureaucratic inertia for the benefit of those that have already captured the system. It is as democratic as the internal functions of the CCP.
> US companies don't have to like it, they can leave.
Why doesn't the EU make them leave? Because you want to act all superior to, say, the CCP or Russia.
> Beaten by the facts
Not even close
> more vague and hateful nonsense.
Come off it - that's your whole m.o.
It's not a fact. It's just pedantry that is conveniently not applied anywhere else. Nobody would say the US president isn't elected or ministers aren't elected, but when it comes to the EU a double standard is applied by dishonest ideologues.
The rest of your post is classic moving of goal posts, but fwiw Congress has been absolutely irrelevant since the sitting president decided to rule by decree.
Absolute gold, thanks for that.
> The rest of your post is classic moving of goal posts.
At least you lot have a wicked sense of irony.
Yes technically the us 'electors' could vote for a different presidential ticket, but that's never happened in practice and even then their options are generally limited by who ran, electors can't pick just anyone.
Nobody ever complains about ambassadors not being democratic though. Same thing goes for, idk, a Secretary of State or whatever, they all go through the same process.
Only when it comes to EU institutions people can't hide their hatred and can't help themselves but make the same old dishonest claim.
The federal reserve isn't known as especially democratic.
Only people being dishonest are those who ignore massive speech restrictions in europe. Look up cj Hopkins. I could go on and on and on. Sadly my comment likely to never even be seen because of how aggressive hn is whenever there's any intelligent push back to the progressive/liberal agenda.
Edit. If your takeaway aftertwo minute search on cj hopkins is lol Nazis are bad, then you have much more profound problems with research and basic understanding of reality then I can assist you with. Try going through the actual court documents and primary sources for once in your life instead of just letting whichever source of truth you trust to propagandize you.
Yikes, I just did. Trivializing the holocaust in Germany of all places is not a good look.
Edit: This is exclusively based on the primary source - a book cover where the guy was using a swastika (!!!) to critise a policy he didn't like - i.e. made light of the holocaust. If you don't understand why that's completely unacceptable, I don't know what to tell you.
I'll help you out one last time since you seem to be somewhat trying...maybe https://off-guardian.org/2024/10/01/guilty
Cj hopkins is just one example, there are many more.
Edit: ok. You no longer are arguing in good faith, you clearly just have an agenda and will twist whatever I present to you to further that agenda. Can't have a good faith debate with someone who lacks principles. One cover trivializing the Holocaust and the other... Doesn't... Because it suits my narrative. It's just so scummy. Anyway, you've camped this thread and posted more then anyone else here, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.
It's one thing to use something for documentary purposes or in art. It's another to use it to make light of the holocaust like this guy did. It's all clearly written in our law.
If that person didn't want to follow our law, why did he come here? Why do we have to bother with criminal immigrants that don't want to integrate into our way of life?
Virginia’s 23 Democratic electors (Southern) refused to vote for Democratic VP candidate Richard Mentor Johnson due to his open common-law relationship with Julia Chinn, an enslaved woman of mixed race (octoroon). Interracial marriage was illegal under anti-miscegenation laws. They voted for Van Buren (president) but switched VP votes to William Smith (another Democrat), denying Johnson a majority. The Senate elected Johnson anyway.
The EU systems balances national sovereignty with direct democracy but leans toward the former. It's a good system.
Anyway, EU states went to great lengths to join the EU and can leave at any time. Besides the self-destructive UK, none have.
> They must be proposed by the commission, which is not elected but appointed.
The commission is elected by elected representatives. Just like in many countries the leader isn't directly elected by voters but by their elected representatives.
Your comment is just ideological nonsense. You could argue in good faith about the pros and cons of various systems but you don't, it's just hate because you heard Trump or Musk or some right wing figure say it say it and you're garrotting it.
Prove me wrong by detailing whats wrong with it, and "muh democracy" doesn't count.
You make unsupported claims of censorship, but how exactly is a fine against misleading blue dot censorship since it contains no speech? The company could change how they describe the blue dot or attach disclaimers but they don't.
Why? Because the EU's actions serve Musk's and the Administrations political goals of vilifying anyone who has a different view, especially the EU, and using the levers of the state to retaliate and threaten.
> The EU makes more money from fining American tech companies than it makes from EU tech.
If it wasn't for ASML there would be no tech industry. The world depends on a single EU company for advanced chips and for its continued prosperity.
> Don’t let unelected bureaucrats convince you that this is anything more than a revenue raising exercise for themselves.
You're just another EU hater pushing mindless tropes. Why are you so full of hate?