European Politics

Yax said:
I find myself in agreement. I'm very wary regarding a Ukraine accession into the EU as it is (and how it was pre-war). You need to meet the standards, and I think the 1-vote veto in the European Council needs to be abolished before we keep expanding anyway.
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Another thing that worries me is that we are heading steadily to authoritarianism. All those decisions and more are made without us or our elected representatives. Those high level officials Ursula or Borel, etc., are they elected?

This example of expansion clearly a matter of NATO interest it raises concern also for our sovereignty. Whose interests serve this expansion? Is that of European interest? If yes, then why I am not asked? Why are we so dead silent vs Israel?
Thus we not only losing on democracy but also on sovereignty I feel.

I remember Varoufakis had said back in 2015 that Europe will either democratized itself or it will disintegrate in 10 years, thus the meaning of 25 before DiEM in his party’s name.
 
____no5 said:
Another thing that worries me is that we are heading steadily to authoritarianism. All those decisions and more are made without us or our elected representatives. Those high level officials Ursula or Borel, etc., are they elected?
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Don't go into Bruxit's territory!! The President of the European Commission is proposed by the European Council and elected by the European Parliament (members of which, as you know, are democratically elected).
 
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GhostofCain said:
The President of the European Commission is proposed by the European Council and elected by the European Parliament (members of which, as you know, are democratically elected).
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Yes kind of second degree though. The President of the Commission is not elected by the people so there’s no accountability to the people. As if the POTUS was proposed by the Senate and voted by the House, kind of.
Also the members of the Commission again nominated, not elected or selected among the elected so there you go.
 
____no5 said:
Yes kind of second degree though. The President of the Commission is not elected by the people so there’s no accountability to the people. As if the POTUS was proposed by the Senate and voted by the House, kind of.
Also the members of the Commission again nominated, not elected or selected among the elected so there you go.
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Eh, technically POTUS is elected by the Electoral College, that's why they can LOSE the popular vote and still be president.
 
____no5 said:
Yes kind of second degree though. The President of the Commission is not elected by the people so there’s no accountability to the people. As if the POTUS was proposed by the Senate and voted by the House, kind of.
Also the members of the Commission again nominated, not elected or selected among the elected so there you go.
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It is not that different from most parliamentary democracies, where Presidents/Prime Ministers are elected by the members of parliament, which have been democratically elected.
 
Onhell said:
Eh, technically POTUS is elected by the Electoral College, that's why they can LOSE the popular vote and still be president.
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Yes I know, but what I describe is different, imagine that you vote for a pool of people and then they propose a person you never knew or voted for.

GhostofCain said:
It is not that different from most parliamentary democracies, where Presidents/Prime Ministers are elected by the members of parliament, which have been democratically elected.
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It is in the sense that in either system the person who has the real power being President or Prime Minister is directly voted not selected.
But I take your point.
See, when I made the first post I had completely forgotten about European Parliament existence. Why is that? First there is little coverage of what is happening there. Second many important decisions in EU are being taken by completely unofficial bodies such as Eurogroup. The fate of Greece for the next 50 years was decided there behind closed doors without even full recording of the talks.
The way EU is set up segregates people from the decision making process.
 
That's the thing, in the US there is the ILLUSION of voting directly for the president. I know LC can explain it better, but essentially when you vote for x or y candidate those votes go to the Elector of the college of that party who may or MAY NOT vote as the people will it. A democrat elector can vote for the republican candidate if they so wish. Now, that has rarely if ever happened, but they are free to do so.
 
Faithless electors have never impacted a US election, and by now there's laws in many states forbidding them to do so. Functionally, you vote for president.
 
Yes it seems so. The institutions in US are formidable and College always respected their voters. I think there were very few cases of faithless electors, which never impacted any election as LC said. The problem in US are the lobbies aka Deep State which have too much power. And the horizontal representation in the Senate i.e., California & Wisconsin get the same number of Senators. I get why it was designed like this but it still quite unfair.

Anyway, systems are designed* to reduce the power of the people, but I get much greater sense of democracy in US than in EU.


*EDIT: In case of US, there is the option to by-pass the popular vote by the Electoral College. They never did or expected to do, but the option is there!
 
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Now that you mentioned there’s a kind of resurgence of far right in Greece as well though in this case I’m more disappointed with our neocon wannabe government and the lawfare they did to keep them out.

You should never ever use lawfare to keep people out from the ballot.

Problem is that BS parties are on the rise exactly because the ruling parties continue to screw up spectacularly.
 
Brigantium said:
I saw this. Wtf is going on? Are they trying to say the stabbings were a terrorist attack?
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Guy seems to be a "foreigner", no motive officially given for the attacks, which has allowed these creeps the excuses they needed to run amok. Police getting attacked, buses and trams on fire.

Far right have been aggressively recruiting the dregs of society for quite awhile, anti-vax types and the likes, and the police have taken a softly softly approach. It should have been nipped in the bud long before now.

EDIT: they're looting footlocker now, of course the idiots are filming it all and posting it online
 
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