> If this gets pushed through, you will gradually lose control of your government
A little bit off-topic but so called president of the EU is not elected, nor are the figures in so called EU commission :)
> If this gets pushed through, you will gradually lose control of your government
A little bit off-topic but so called president of the EU is not elected, nor are the figures in so called EU commission :)
EU commission president isn’t directly elected, but neither is the US. President. Voter choose electors who then pick the US president. In EU: voters elect national parties that form groups in the Parliament, which then elects the Commission President.
The two are not comparable. In the US, the presidential candidate is known in advance and people vote mostly for the candidate they want, even if indirectly.
In the EU, no party runs with a candidate for the commission. Those are decided only after the election and are often people that would have lost a party votes if they were known in advance.
So they are both elected indirectly but US president candidates are more well known for a longer time. Got it.
some extra detail: comission president is a two-stage process: The European Council (representatives of the member states, either head of state or head of the government) proposes, the Parliament confirms or vetoes.
That's not true. They are elected but not directly by the population but by the representative of each state.
They are nominated, not elected. This may vary state by state but in our country there is not election process for them.
In many EU countries neither head of state/government are elected then.
In some (most?) EU countries the head of the state or government is not elected directly, but even then is elected in the parliament and without continuous parliament majority support is unable to effectively govern.
This is not the case for the EU institutions, where the EP is the least powerful body by far. While the EP 'elects' the head of the Commission and confirms the members, it does not choose them. It is not possible to be elected head of the Commission without being nominated by the European Council. This is so far removed from a democratic process we can't really call it an election.
[dead]
Brexit was an awful thing, BUT it will increase democracy for both parties.
EU needs to be made more democratic or we need to severely limit its power, as its original intent, because the current show is just a farce.
Brexit did not and will not 'increase democracy' in any way anywhere.
It will, in time. You basically cut the hierarchy in half. A citizen can now meet their politician in the supermarket.
The other parts necessary is transparency and democracy but those are on other orthogonal axis.
It won't, you haven't cut any hierarchy, that's not how the EU works (but the UK let themselves get disinformed about that for decades by certain Mr. Johnson and others). A citizen can meet the politician in the supermarket in the same way as before and it does not matter, because the politician lied to him, the citizen believed him and voted for the Brexit and nothing got better. Now the citizen does not believe in democracy in general. Trust is what has been lost.
I can meet my MEP in the supermarket. I can write to him an email and he will reply personally. This is a non-issue.
The "current show" is just because member states don't want to give up responsibilities to the EU, hence why we have the Commission. In a more federal EU the parliament would have more power.
The only good thing to come out of Brexit is setting an undeniable example for what a monumental failure it was. For those who are paying attention, anyway. And that group is not the majority of voters.
We'll still end up with a Reform government lead by Farage in the next election.
There is little hope if the AFD takes Germany. There might not be much of an EU left soon.
Instead of fighting this unmitigated march towards fascism, all the EU is concerned with is chat controls and further limiting the freedoms of its own population.
Ultimately, those with all the money and power will still have all the money and power, fascism or not. It's just that under fascism, they think their power is easier to maintain, so they will short-sightedly choose fascism.
That will lead to war, will lead to a big reset and then we'll repeat the exercise in 2120 when we've all forgotten, again, that concentrating power in the hands of the few has one inevitable outcome, taught by history again and again and again.
What the world will look like by then, who knows. Hotter, more hostile, digitalised to the point of humans and machines becoming nearly indistinguishable? Who knows.
I suppose there's a chance of this also being the precipice of the great filter and then there won't be anyone to quibble over these sorts of things.
Maybe a new civilisation of intelligent beings will pop up from the savagery of nature. But they will also apply 'survival of the fittest' to all strata of their society and here we go again.
All of the presidents are elected. The bodies electing them are always part of a democratic process. Just because it's indirect doesn't make it less democratic. the president of the commission is even covered twice at it gets nominated by the council and the elected by the parliament. The parliament we voted for, the council are the head of states who might also not come from a direct democratic process.
What is this Brexit talking point? The EU president is elected by the EU parliament/comission, whose members are directly elected by the people.