← Back to context

Comment by qcnguy

6 days ago

[flagged]

Proposed by the European Council [1] = governors in US terms.

Accepted by the European Parliament = single chamber congress.

What part of this process is not democratic?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Council

  • I asked why, not how. In any democracy that question is easy to answer. You can look at the candidates platform or poll the voters to find out why someone won. You can't answer the question I asked, because nobody knows why she got the job. The vote in the Europarl had a single candidate choice (her) and nobody else. Literally a rubber stamp.

    • Because the party groups negotiated with the heads of states comprising the European Council to find a suitable candidate?

      You know, like how all parliamentary systems works? No parliamentary system directly has the populace vote for their prime minister.

      After the election someone has the task of proposing an executive government to the parliament. In many countries that is the speaker of the house. In the EU it is the heads of states.

      The European Parliament has also rejected commissioners from being appointed. How is that literally being a rubber stamp?

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/26/meps-reject-tw...

      Yes, the EU is a bit more complex. What most people miss is that the EU functionally has both an upper and lower house, with the upper house being selected from the national elections and lower house from EU wide elections.

      I personally would prefer a more transparent system with more involvmement of the people in the EU democracy. But the EU functionally is democratic where the votes in both EU and national elections leads to the current executive branch.

      5 replies →