> Except, of course that all the Eurogroup does is feed suggestions into the Council of Ministers, which literally holds the formal powers.
Nope. That's what you might wanna believe. Finance Ministers are treated like total idiots - most of them are tbh. They have 10 minutes each to talk about the problems of their country and that's about it. While they are talking others are cheerfully blabbing about personal shit. After this happy exchange of opinions, the German FinMin passes a set of papers which other FinMins are forced to sign blindly, go home and say something along the lines "I know it sucks, but if we want to be part of the EU we need to sign this...". Every now and then the French and Italian FinMin try to express an alternative view but they get quickly spanked and sent home crying like babies.
You might find that acceptable. I don't. I am part of the majority apparently, so fasten your seatbelt 'cause the next couple of years we're going for a wild ride in Europe.
Yanis Varoufakis has talked extensively about it[1]. But the real evidence is the total lack of transcripts of a procedure that should be publicly available since it concerns European citizens directly. Since you seem to be so happy with the current state of the EU, could you explain to me why there is no transcript of what my FinMin said and what XYZ FinMin replied? Maybe you can enlight us.
You got this all wrong - the Council of Ministers has no power where it matters, on budget and policies, at all. It's just there to spoonfeed ppl who can't tell the difference between a symbol with nominal power (that's why you get Malta and Ireland to preside this group) vs a group with executive and decisional power (like the Eurogroup) who decides who's bank are going to be closed next (Ireland and Greece are pretty good examples).
Nope. That's what you might wanna believe. Finance Ministers are treated like total idiots - most of them are tbh. They have 10 minutes each to talk about the problems of their country and that's about it. While they are talking others are cheerfully blabbing about personal shit. After this happy exchange of opinions, the German FinMin passes a set of papers which other FinMins are forced to sign blindly, go home and say something along the lines "I know it sucks, but if we want to be part of the EU we need to sign this...". Every now and then the French and Italian FinMin try to express an alternative view but they get quickly spanked and sent home crying like babies.
You might find that acceptable. I don't. I am part of the majority apparently, so fasten your seatbelt 'cause the next couple of years we're going for a wild ride in Europe.