It is not democratic, as long as the President of the Commission is practically chosen by the European Council and the Parliament only can say yes or no.
And as shown in the last two terms of Von der Leyen, saying no doesn't actually do anything, because the same candidate can be proposed again.
They have their own neighbourhood and rarely mix with the rest of the population. Their Dunbar number (the max. amount of meaningful interpersonal connections that a person can maintain) is fully reached within that inner circle of European power.
Ironically, we managed to re-create a Forbidden City full of mandarins and eunuchs, or a new Versailles, only now they wear modern suits.
Scaling power institutions is always tricky, and this is the main risk.
Good point. At this point I would not be averse to mandating baroque fashion for everyone involved with the EU in that quarter. Also, the yearly trek to Strasbourg shall be made by horse drawn coach (that'll put an end to that wasteful travesty at least).
Eventually it gets on your nerves how much worse the city has to be to cater to the Institutions.
There's something about non-taxed coddled elites eating oysters and drinking champagne at 9AM on a Sunday that makes you a bit of a cynic.
And then, of course, all your friends works for the research companies that get paid a fortune to provide advice to the Eurocrats. But well, your friend has a Bachelor's in Marketing and she's being considered an expert on Soil Research because… eh, the agency is getting paid.
The Bubble is there and you'll be exposed to it. It's not a good Bubble. It's mostly young MBAs and Political Science majors that think they know how to fix everything.
(And some very talented people, of course. It's not all bad.)
It is undemocratic. Voting for only 720 people in the entire EU apparatus once every 5 years, whilst they are part of across-borders parties is not democracy but oligarchy with the illusion of choice.
Elected officials, elected judges and binding referenda would make it democratic.
We did not elect EU leaders. They keep secrets (COVID vaccin deals), they exempt themselves from ChatControl, they are obliged to store their communications yet internally recommend Signal with disappearing messages. Whats democratic about it?
The council is composed of representatives of each state. That means you did not vote for 26 out of the 27 members, and most states don't have special elections for European Council members* -- which means that most of them have not been elected into their Council position.
* the Council of composed of ministers and heads of government. Ministerial posts are distributed among the winning party members in pretty much every country, and only presidential systems have a direct election for their head of government. In constitutional monarchies, the head of government is commonly assigned to the largest party leader, but it's not a directly electable position.
The parliament seats are also apportioned by state. I don't find that a bad idea, living in a small country, and I don't see why the council seats being divided by country is a worse idea than the system in the parliament.
It's federalistic. It's a bit drastic - but I guess no one could imagine one state having 66 times the population as another in 1789. Other federal states compensate for that - for example, in the German Bundesrat, each state gets 3 to 6 seats according to population.
A problem for the US is that /both/ chambers of parliament are skewed that way.
The House is neither proportional (structurally represents parties roughly in proportion to their vote share) nor, what I expect you mean, divided into districts of equal population. The size difference between the smallest and largest districts—RI district 2 and Montana’s at large district—is 1:2 in population. It’s less unequal than the Senate, but its still not equal representation.
And, despite certain bills having to originate in the House, the Senate is more powerful since all Congressional powers either require both houses in concert or the Senate alone (except for electing the President when there is an electoral tie, which the House does but with a voting rule of one-vote-per-state-delegation which gives it the same undemocratic weighting as the Senate has normally.)
> The size difference between the smallest and largest districts—RI district 2 and Montana’s at large district—is 1:2 in population.
Come again? MT and RI have the same approximate population (1.1M) and the same number of representatives (2). I’m talking about the state level here.
> all Congressional powers either require both houses in concert
Right, they act as checks and balances upon one another. Equal-sized representation to give smaller states a way to avoid being steamrolled by the will of the largest states — why would states want to stay in a union where they have no hope of representation? Methinks if Alabama and Mississippi kept everything about themselves politically the same yet were both the size of California and New York you’d probably be of a different mind about the importance of the senate.
