Haha, whoopsie! I love funny little mistakes between governmental leaders and billion dollar corporations like this. Good thing this isn’t regular citizens using an encrypted messaging app, because then we’d have a real problem.
Yep, crazy how transparent and democratic the whole affair and the EU is. I'm glad the EU and its subject governments are reminding me daily how they protect democratic values, how corrupted Russia (and sometimes China) is with all its oligarchs, and how they're protecting and extending my rights.
I hear the Kremlin responds promptly to freedom of information requests. Just make sure you ask for the right thing, or get ready to check your tea and underpants for the rest of your life.
The good think is that EU is not holding you back from experiencing perfect democracy in Russia or China. Maybe you can become a poster boy/girl as a political refugee from rotten West there.
I made exactly the move you’re talking about a dozen years ago.
Not so much interested in being a poster boy, but, every so often I read the news back West, and it all seems completely bizarre. But I think to myself, “Well, it’s the news; I’m sure it’s just exaggerated.”
Recently a few of my friends who’ve been overseas a while traveled back to the West, and in talking to them, I have had them confirm that, no, it is not exaggerated, it is actually like that there now.
It’s pretty boring over here compared to over there. No crime, no drugs, no inflation, no culture wars. There are things you can’t speak about over here, just like in the West. One difference between China and Europe is if you speak about the things you can’t speak about here, you get multiple warnings before any jail time happens. Germany for instance will jail you for your first verboten meme. That’s a little extreme.
It does certainly seem a lot more exciting in the West right now, with the groups of people fighting with each other for social and political power, the crime, the drugs, the inflation. It’s like a real-life roller-coaster ride. I think that’s probably a real plus.
> One difference between China and Europe is if you speak about the things you can’t speak about here, you get multiple warnings before any jail time happens.
This is a very interesting comment (you'll be paid exceptionally 10 maos for it) which resonate with an observation I made after reading a Wikipedia page about a LGBT activist academic. Not only he had multiple warnings, but he also get his position back at the university after publishing his self-criticism. Now, compare that with the US cancel-culture: got fired over suspicion, no warning, no trial and no job back even when proven no harm was done.
I'm sure certain people get "warnings" in China due to their privileged position. Living as a foreigner with the right passport and social status puts you in that position.
The average citizen has to be much more careful and minority groups that the CCP has decided are a threat to society go direct to the re-education center -- or worse.
Some western democracies are unfortunately moving in the wrong direction recently, but none have re-education or forced labour camps that I am aware of.
I have colleagues from China. They visit us occasionally and we exchange sometimes even about half forbidden topics. They work and live in city with 7 millions people and it’s kinda (as you write) boring. It’s absolutely like my countryside life and I like it. For me personally western politics is disgusting. Why? There are groups of people who have resources to influence voters enough to have the right people to do right thing for them. There are no real fights, just show for voters.
I don't know if that's what you imply, but the correct mindset for every problem is not "Be happy it's not worse", it's "Why the f*ck is it not better and how will we make it so?".
The point is humans are humans. The rest of philosophical gibberish.
If you want to enjoy life in the US, better be good at tech. Cost of living and minimum wage create a de facto communist quota system, and until Papa Musk is happy with units shipped, we’re going to hear about it!
Society could apply industrialism to biological health and resiliency and a lot of free time to explore existence, but that won’t help vain angry men earn military prestige, or vain socialites earn social status if equality of condition was our social goal.
No it’s the most traditional of social goals for us; serve power, be told it’s for your own good. Propaganda 101; stoke desired emotional tone, repeat words of power.
Developers! Developers! Developers!
The message does not stick in the cortex if the limbic system isn’t primed.
> when the EU screws up, it makes the news and everyone can read it
This entire article makes no mentions or allusions to obvious corruption and malice. As mentioned in other comments, the same person has previously been found to delete/tamper such evidence.
So I’m not sure what “reading about it” is supposed to do…
Mobile phone data that can’t be found? What does that remind me off?
> From January 2019 to February 2020, a committee of inquiry investigated the legality of contracts awarded by von der Leyen to external consultants of the Bundeswehr. According to reports in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, cell phone data relevant to the investigation was deleted, files were improperly redacted and files were destroyed. Text messages were removed from both cell phones used by the then minister. For example, an IT officer from the ministry's CIT department performed a "security wipe" on one of the two cell phones, after which it was finally disposed of because von der Leyen's cell phone had been affected by a data leak (the so-called Advent calendar hack).
I do not think this is coincidence. Von der Leyen was practically kicked out German government because she was not able to control procurement for the German military. Now she repeated the stunt with the procurement of vaccines knowing she faced no consequence last time she simply let evidence of incompetence disappear. Her qualification is literally that she was born in Brussels into a Eurocrat's family.
Ursula von der Leyen was not elected by EU citizens, and she makes decisions that many governemts of smaller EU countries simply copy/implement. Even before deals with Pfizer there were many accusations of corruption, but I am not aware of any investigation. And I am not aware that many journalists are doing any research here. This is a huge problem.
> Ursula von der Leyen was not elected by EU citizens
it's even worse than that
prior to the election there was the usual stuff you'd expect: potential candidates begin interviewed by the press, television debates, where they would explain what they planned to do if they won, why their policy was the right one, etc
then after the election all of those candidates were discarded and von der Leyen was appointed as commission president
despite not being named prior or participating in the process of democratic scrutiny at all
She was proposed by the European Council (made up of more or less democratically elected heads of state/government) and approved by the European Parliament (democratically elected representatives)
That is as "elected" as many heads of government i.e. any prime minister system
Directly electing presidents doesn't necessarily lead to better outcomes
There were candidates nominated for the election and she wasn't of of them. Actually Manfred Weber was the elected candidate, but Merkel made sure that he did not get the job. The whole election was a farce and calling this democratic is quite a bold claim.
Sorry, but that is laughable. If there was a presidential election in the US with two candidates, and after the election the governor of California installed Weird Al Yankovic instead of the elected candidate as the new presdient, would you call it democratic simply because the governor of California was elected?
If in the US instead of a president, all you could elect was party functionaries to an institution with the explicit purpose of being between the voters and the decision and they then voted somebody in as president against the popular vote, would you call that democratic?
Because that's what happened in 2016 and many times before that.
Actually, Merkel was not elected by the poulace but rather her party was. You see, it's layers all the way down and with each layer democracy gets thinner and the opportunities for corruption get bigger.
EU commissioners are appointed by member governments, in much the same way that civil servants are appointed by politicians. In most democracies there are three pillars of government, legislative, executive and judicial. Commissioners are a part of the executive. And here lies the difference, the amount of decision making power in the hands of executive vs the legislative, and whether the members of the executive need to be directly elected vs indirectly elected.
You could also make the case that representative democracies aren't as good as direct democracies because citizens don't get to vote on laws directly.
Obviously there are trade offs between having elected heads of the executive who are more directly accountable to the citizenry but have less subject matter knowledge vs indirectly elected executive who have somewhat less accountability but more knowledge. There is also the case of less corruption because the indirectly elected heads of the executive aren't as beholden to special interests. Which I personally feel is a huge benefit.
It's just yet another level removed from the voters. If representative democracy is imperfect, then having another level to represent the representatives is more imperfect still.
I want the EU council to hand over many of its powers to the parliament and commission. (I’m fine with the parliament itself proposing and voting on the commission head, I’m not in favor of a directly elected head – but that’s just the German in me speaking where the federal government is set up exactly that way.)
It‘s the national governments standing in the way of that, not the EU itself.
The flip side to this argument is that it's harder to have a demagogue in the executive if they are indirectly elected. Or worse still a plutocrat dressed up as a demagogue.
Right, this accusation is serious enough that we must get to the bottom of it.
For starters, we could examine the logs of all messages between Pfizer and the Commission. These logs are held by independent ISPs on both sides of the Atlantic and thus ought to be resistant to tampering.
There is not a snowball's chance in hell that these texts are not archived on a server somewhere. So if we do not see them, it's because 'they' do not want us to see them.
Maybe the missing messages are saved on the same thumb drive as Zensursula's SMS she sent during the German parliamentary investigations in the Defense Ministry's dealings with outside consultancies, when she happened to be the Defense Minister.
> Ursula von der Leyen was not elected by EU citizens
But was she not elected by EU members of parliment, who were elected by EU citizens?
Every country I have ever lived in had a similar arrangement, I control who are elected to parliament, parliament votes for president, and the president serves at the pleasure of partliment.
Not that this is an endorsement of the EU or Ursula von der Leyen, I'm not an EU citizen, don't live in an EU country, and don't care to live in one either.
I think the main issue with EU is that it too much is decided at the EU level, but this to me is not related to it using a parliamentary system or Ursula not being elected directly by EU citizens, I think it is more related to what powers they can exercise.
Many (of the interested) people in the EU are unhappy about some democratic shortcomings of the EU. The only directly elected body is the parliament and it is not very powerful. There is too little power at directly elected bodies and too much power at elements, that are far from the voters reach.
At the last election they wanted to address that and promised that the lead candidate of the party with the most votes will be the commissioner.
That didn't happen. Instead we got vdL, who was in trouble as Minister of Defense in Germany for some hiring consultants without proper process and for ... deleting messages from her phone.
The whole situation is extremely painful for people like me, who support the EU. The tone-deafness, the disrespect for the voter. It is painful.
This is exactly the issue why many people voted for Brexit. There was a feeling of disconnect between the people and the power. Now it may seem like a complete disaster, but we feel that our vote matters more now.
It's a shame the EU has not addressed this and they don't seem to be doing it anytime soon.
The most painful side effect of this is increasing corruption and lack of sense of responsibility among politicians. They feel like they can do whatever they want and there is extremely slim chance they get booted out or investigated.
Let's be real here... The reason why most people voted was because they didn't want the influx of (EU)-immigrants that they couldn't decide over.
That and the idea that they would have a lot more control after brexit while in reality the world is more complicated than that. E.g. they lose negotiation power in important trade deals because nowadays Britain is just a tiny island with little to say. A lot of other laws are influenced by international treaties between bigger economical powers as well.
Virtually nobody cares about trade deals. They care about how much the people that govern them reflect their own values and concerns. India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan probably would have benefitted economically from being one country with one common market. But nobody wants that because Indians don’t want to be governed by Pakistanis and vice versa. Trade is a red herring.
What reasons do people give to justify their vote choice for Leave or Remain? And, what are the reasons they think the other side voted as they did? New briefing note CSI Brexit 4: People’s Stated Reasons for Voting Leave or Remain. Summary of the findings:
Several different surveys and opinion polls have asked Britons why they voted the way they did in the EU referendum. The two main reasons people voted Leave were ‘immigration’ and ‘sovereignty’, whereas the main reason people voted Remain was ‘the economy’.
Analysis of data from the Centre for Social Investigation’s longitudinal survey on attitudes to Brexit bolsters these conclusions.
Among four possible reasons for voting Leave, ‘to teach British politicians a lesson’ is ranked last by an overwhelming majority of Leave voters, contrary to the claim that Brexit was a ‘protest vote’.
Among four possible reasons for voting Remain, ‘a strong attachment to Europe’ is ranked last by a sizable majority of Remain voters, consistent with the claim that Britons have a relatively weak sense of European identity.
When asked to rank the reasons why their counterparts voted the way they did, Leave voters characterise Remain voters more accurately than Remain voters characterise Leave voters. In particular, Remain voters underestimate the importance that Leave voters attach to the EU having no role in UK law-making.
---end quote.
As for losing negotiation power, since Brexit the UK has negotiated multiple Billions of GBP worth of trade deals around the world. The OECD and the IMF are forecasting that the UK economy will be above the Eurozone economy. (https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn02...)
I'm not sure that posting research showing that Leave voters' highest priority was immigration and their lowest priority by some distance was teaching politicians a lesson is the best way to rebut the GP's claim that immigration was much more important than a sense that politicians felt they could do what they wanted...
I'm not sure I follow. The two main reasons to vote for brexit are the ones that I mention?
I'm not sure I follow your negotiation power argument either.
It was necessary. The UK needed to negotiate trade deals and they have them now, that does not mean this was done from a position of strength. I of course hope that they managed to negotiate the best they could.
Regarding the statistics you bring up... What exactly are you looking at and over what time period? An interesting question would be how the UK could have performed had they stayed in the EU.
I ask because your link mentions the following: > "For 2021 as a whole, UK GDP growth was 7.4%. This was the highest in the G7. The UK had the largest decline in GDP among the G7 in 2020 (-9.3%) and its relatively strong performance in 2021 was to some degree a recovery from weakness in 2020."
Inflation is currently highest in 40 years, the current forecast is recession and Scotland will break away from the UK next year and joins the EU as soon as they can, Northern Ireland and Wales maybe follows. Ahh and let’s not talk about the English government plans for the Brexit agreement.
> They didn't have a majority in 2014 and it's unlikely they have it now.
They didn't but they won the last scottish general election with the clear program that they want to hold another indepence vote and that they will go for independence. Together with the Green party (also independence supporters) they have a pretty decent mayority. If I assume that everybody who voted for the will vote for indepence, then it is a done deal.
Also I can put 2 + 2 together. At the last independence vote people vote to stay in the UK to stay in the EU. At the Brexit vote 62% of the people voted for remain and not just that: every council in Scotland saw Remain majorities. The next independece vote is about to go back to the EU, so I assume people who vote to stay in the EU will vote to be in the EU again.
Also, the average Scotish is angry, because in the UK there are 39,860,400 voter in England and 4,079,600 voters in Scotland so it rarely matters what does the people in Scotland voting for. Also, they will be even more angry and desperate when they will get the winter energy bill (which will be 2-3x the last winter energy bill and a lots of people need to think about if the want to eat or stay warm). And they will be even more angry every time they are going to be told that you cannot vote again on their independence, because they will feel ignored again and they will not vote rationally. They will vote against the UK and against the current UK government because they had enough of not being able to have a say in what happening in Scotland (and it does no matter if this is true or not, the only thing matters if people belive it is true)
How do I know the people are angry and why they are angry? I live here and I talk to people.
Most people voted for Brexit to stop immigrants "taking their jobs", and to try and piss off useless UK politicians. They might tell themselves after the fact it was for some other reason now they realise what they have done.
I've never heard anyone say they think their vote "matters more" because of Brexit. Aside from the fact it is patently untrue (we still use the least democratic and most divisive method, FPTP) the EU Parliament elections are actually more democratic by virtue using PR, which allowed UKIP to send a load of MEPs to Brussels.
More than a smaller party could ever get into Westminster even if they had a similar proportion of support due to our broken democracy.
Nope. Most people voted for Brexit because we wanted our sovereignty back. We welcome legal immigrants and 6 million or EU immigrants so have chosen to stay here after Brexit. We don't welcome illegal immigrants. While in the EU we had to take EU immigrants over non-EU which was hardly fair. Now both EU and non-EU immigrants are treated the same.
I don't get what you mean when you say you had to take EU immigrants over non-EU immigrants. No such policy exists afaik. There are (different) rules for both cases and if the rules are fulfilled, you're free to enter.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but: I am in the UK, and I absolutely 100% do not feel that any vote of mine matters more now that we have left the EU. (And, also, there are votes I no longer get to cast -- e.g., those for members of the European Parliament.)
While that was a rhetorical point in the Brexit campaign, in reality the nameless unelected bureaucrats in Brussels were simply replaced by nameless unelected bureaucrats in London
Every Western "democracy" suffers from the same fundamental problem - entrenched deep state, and a lack of feedback loop towards it. It's extremely hazy where, how and by whom decisions are truly made, and as a consequence, nobody ever faces any consequences if those decisions flop. People like Biden, Harris, Johnson or Truss are so glaringly incompetent that nobody even suspects them to have any input into the decision process, they're simple announcers. Elections allow us to change the announcers, but change nothing about the deep state that ultimately dictates the policies. Brussels works the same way, it's just makes the fundamental problem more obvious
Your statement strikes me as too generalizing and overly simplistic and the conclusion that basically the entire circus of Western democratic parties and elections is meaningless and we're all ruled by an anonymous, malicious class of fellow citizens that somehow want only the worst for us and we're gonna label them the "deep state" is as absurd as it is unnecessarily threatening the freedom we all cherish.
Two or even several things can be true at the same time.
Yes, some decision making transcends legistlative periods of elected officials.
Other decisions are actively brought in and executed.
Yes, there is a lack of feedback loop. Sometimes there are public compliance investigations after the fact.
Yes, some politicians are incompetent and have risen due to other qualifications, be it greed, be it communication. Some politicians may just not show their qualifications in the few moments when all the spotlight is on them.
Democracies are imperfect exactly not because there is a centralized hidden agenda going on but because people like you and I with emotions and ego participate in every step of the process.
Yes democracies are painfully slow to respond to change, don't catch all malicious actors in its executive branch and live with an oversized public servant body most of the time, but so help me any spiritual being you might know or believe in I'd choose to live in one any day of the week over autocracies where everything is nicely simple and announced by one, all competent super hero.
I'd recommend watching an annual People Congress of the CCP or how Putler auditions his inner circle and scolds them like school boys and then let's have a talk about the deep state.
Yes I agree and this is not all together a bad thing.
We need some stability otherwise fast talking demagogues and mob sentiment would routinely upset the apple cart. The bureaucracy (aka the "deep state") provides that.
But what you point out is also a problem. How do you get rid of corruption and incompetence when they routinely circle the wagons to protect their own and are beyond the reach of the voters? It is a big problem in Western society right now.
Note that the US has a specific mechanism to address this disconnect. Anyone who exercises any real power and discretion in the executive branch must be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The executive bureaucracy may be sprawling, but you can lay the blame for any significant policy failing directly on someone you voted for (or against).
Which is about the equal to the EU. Council of the EU [1] has similar function as the senate in the US. The council is made up of the heads of governments, as elected, by the member countries. The council proposes the commission, which is then left for the EU parliament to confirm.
This very close, pretty much about equal to the election process of the US senate before the 17th amendment in 1912.[2] The difference being no popular vote for the president. As is the case for the "head of state" for pretty much all European countries. Exceptions are only France?
The major difference is that only the commission has the right to legislative initiative. To balance this the EU parliament can dissolve the commission based on a vote of no confidence.
So all in all, it's a truly democratic system with all the checks and balances. The major difference is the lack of cross European parties, thus your choice becomes collected together in the same basket as what your chosen party thinks is the right path. Completely through representative democracy, either from the head of government or European parliament.
Not many Americans realize that the original vision and the implementation of the political organization of the United Stated was very resembling that of European Union. The US states were just a bit less sovereign than EU member states (with differences mostly about having independent militaries and foreign relations), and the role of the federal US government was closer to what role EU plays for its member states.
Then, suddenly, in early 20th century, the federal US government made a huge power grab, and now the states are mostly just subjects of it, with much less sovereignty remaining. That’s what some EU skeptics are concerned about as well: sudden sweep and becoming subjects of Brussels.
> But was she not elected by EU members of parliment
Technically she was nominated by the European Council, i.e. the heads of state of the 27 member countries. EU Parliament is called to approve or reject the nomination of the entire Commission, which is theoretically set up by the candidate president (in practice national governments have a big say, and there are formulas to guarantee representation in the cabinet for every country in a cyclical manner).
Whether that is democratic or not, well... if they don't trust their own head of state, I reckon their democratic system has bigger problems than some text messages.
> Whether that is democratic or not, well... if they don't trust their own head of state, I reckon their democratic system has bigger problems than some text messages.
Then the proper quest is if you trust 27 heads of state, only 1 of which you have any political influence over.
At some point, everyone's freedom ends where someone else's begin. If you want a continent-size government (which, let's be honest, in a world of superpowers you do), you'll have to compromise with another 450k citizens and their representatives. Americans manage to do it, after all.
Also, EUParliament gives us a direct say in practice. People worried about the democratic deficit in the EU should push their own governments to relinquish more powers from Council to Parliament.
I do. Because if it isnt thuis continent sized government over which I have soms control, it'll be another continent government, over which is have zero control.
I am from a small country, and I think this bring a perspective of inherent relatedness that people from larger countries lack. Control can't be binary, nor should it be. We're together with many others.
We've never been more in control of ourselves than we are right now.
Only a small minority of people actually think continent sized governments are a good idea, especially in Europe. Most people think this is self-evidently a bad idea, which is why the EU leaderships are never willing to let people actually have a referendum on the question - the UK being the lone exception, and look at how nastily the various pro-EU minorities in power tried to stop it being implemented!
"Americans manage to do it, after all."
Americans fought a brutal civil war to ensure the federal government would continue to enjoy supremacy over the states. In the modern era, about half of Americans currently think their country is heading for a second civil war, according to opinion polls. In recent days you're seeing elected federal politicians directly state that people should disobey rulings of the Supreme Court and laws of state governments. You've had federal agencies spying on and directly attacking elected presidents, with no consequences.
So it is absolutely not clear that Americans manage to do this, in a timeless/stable sense. They've managed it in the 20th century but for most of that time they had serious external enemies to bind the country together. Historically speaking, very large and powerful governments tend to collapse from internal decay, splintering into small countries. The number of countries rapidly increased in the 20th century as empires fell apart and new countries formed in their wake. Very few/no people regret this process - you don't see many people hankering after the Ottoman Empire or USSR, do you? A lot of the instability in the Middle East is a legacy of this process, for example.
The polls said the same for the British population before the referendum process started. The population changed its mind before the vote.
Actually, you have to be careful with polls. Polling showed a very clear and strong majority of the British population did not like the EU and were basically opposed to it, but a significant chunk of those people were scared of the threatened economic and tax consequences (which were in the end a lie - there was no emergency tax hike and no recession). If they had not been threatened with ruin then the Leave vote would have been much higher.
The EU has demonstrated it is willing to create essentially unlimited amounts of disruption in order to stop countries leaving. It won't play nice, or respect the wishes of the electorate. It will fight them. Inevitably that scares people, it did in the UK too. This does not mean that those people actually like their situation.
You have to be careful about referendums too, especially when the government organizing them disenfranchises a group of citizens that are very likely to vote a certain way (UK migrants in the EU).
People didn't vote to remain in the EU because they were scared, no matter how much you want it to be that way. There are real tangible benefits of EU membership that UK citizens didn't want to loose.
Last I checked the UK had left, it has not been stopped. That one thing caused a lot of problems for the conspiracy theorists and anti-EU crowd who were suggesting it was not possible for a country to leave. Now the goal posts have been moved on that argument to the EU trying to make it "as hard as possible".
I wonder if leaving the UK is harder than leaving the EU. We might get to find out soon.
Representation works like the phone game, every extra layer of of representation distorts the original will of the voter and weakens the democracy.
Politicians try to minimize the power of voters to maximize their own power, and therefore love adding more layers, enabling things like gerrymandering etc. Those problems exists in the US system, but most EU countries avoids those problems, so to EU citizens moving to the American model is a huge step in an undemocratic direction.
LOL at "EU countries avoid those problems" - they all have those problems. From proportional thresholds to the sad joke that is first-past-the-post, all systems have issues here or there. Direct democracy doesn't really exist outside of rare referenda - which also have their own distortions, from eligibility criteria to quorum etc. Democracy is a set of compromises we make to live together in relative peace.
> to EU citizens moving to the American model is a huge step in an undemocratic direction.
No, it's a huge step towards a continent-size governance model, which inevitably requires new ways to interpret the popular will. We're still at the early stages of this process, a process that will probably never end - like it never ended for nation-size governments.
", i.e. the heads of state of the 27 member countries. "
The Italian president is un-elected (chosen by parliament).
Also, what does this mean for Spain, whose head of state is a King?
Im sure "head of state" means "effective ruler of the country", a PM in Italy, the president of France. But ut just points to the Byzantine rules the EU has created in 20 (or is it 30? Or is it 70?) years.
It is simply the real democratic leader of each country for lack of a better single phrase because countries that still have monarchies pretend their head of state is their monarch
There is nothing Byzantine about pragmatically accommodating the differences between the political systems of independent states
The alternative would be.... Requiring all states to not call their monarchs heads of state? Removing their monarchies? Having the same political system? Pointless dogmatism
The reason for the complex rules is not to let the Spaniards pretend their head of state is their head of state (few Spaniards do, it seems to me anyway). The reason is to insulate the power cupola from the vagaries of public opinion.
Which is the original argument here, namely that the EU has a large democratic deficit
> > Ursula von der Leyen was not elected by EU citizens
> But was she not elected by EU members of parliment, who were elected by EU citizens?
This is a common argument when criticizing the EU, but in the end everybody is elected by the people of EU (directly or indirectly). Here is a quick video explaining how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4Uu5eyN6VU
In short: the EU citizens vote for Member of the European Parliament who represents own country and the Europarties. Citizens have no direct control over: the European Council, the president of the council, the European Commission and the president of the comission. You might get the feeling that as EU citizens we have little control over what runs over our heads on EU levels and because of this, a criticism might be observed over how truly democratic the EU is and if some bodies of the EU represent their citizens or particular goals of the Comission and their members.
The point is: national governments have control over most EU mechanisms. National governments are elected by "you", so "you" should trust them to carry out "your" interests. If you don't, the problem is not the EU as much as the way "you" elect your own government, surely?
That's true of most countries, the best we can do with our vote is hope that when mixed with many other votes it leads in the direction we prefer, sometimes in a direct count, often in a multi-staged affair where your vote may or may not influence a local MP/senator/whatever which will then potentially influence which political party's leader becomes the PM/president/whatever.
Maybe (surely) the EU could be restructured to be even more democratic, but isn't that also true for pretty much every country in the world?
But in most EU countries the current government can actually be removed a vote of non-confidence by the respective parliaments. More often than not with a simple majority vote. US style impeachment has much higher hurdles to pass.
1. National governments do not have control. That implies that for each government, they could ensure the outcome they wanted, which is impossible in a shared legal system. In the era of the veto, you could argue that they had at least the very minimal level of control over change (by stopping it), but the EU has been systematically removing national vetos.
2. Even when vetos did exist, they were hardly 'control' as a regular person would understand it. That would be akin to arguing that as long as a car has a working brake you're in control even if you can't move the steering wheel or stop the engine.
3. We don't actually know the national governments control who becomes EU Commission President. We believe this to be the case because in theory the treaties say that's how it works, but the EU routinely violates its own treaties. For example the treaties say that the Commission gets Commissioners allocated and the national governments control those assignments. In practice the former president (Juncker) boasted in public that he vetoed any commissioner he didn't like. This is not allowed under the treaties but, happens anyway.
4. The actual process by which vDL became President is entirely and completely opaque. The national leaders walked into a locked room and ... something happened. Then vDL was announced as leader. How was that decision arrived at? Which countries voted for her or against her, and why? Was there even a vote at all? Are leaders being threatened or bought? The question may sound absurd but actually the EU has quite bad problems with corruption, and effectively buying support via massive subsidies to poorer countries is a core tactic.
The point is, nobody can answer these questions because the EU is completely opaque. vDL refusing to release critical negotiations in direct violation of EU law is entirely expected from this system; the EU has lots of laws and regulations but they are always ignored the moment they become inconvenient. No system that claims to be democratic can tolerate such levels of opacity.
One last point. The assumption in your argument above is that if voters elect a politician they will actually represent the people who elected them. At the individual / leadership level it is fairly well known that the EU routinely corrupts politicians into going against voter's wishes by offering to hire them into the Commission temporarily after they lose elections. These jobs come with absolutely massive "pensions" that are well out of line with any normal pension, which require virtually no work to obtain, which can be claimed before reaching retirement age and which can be rescinded if the recipient is disloyal! In effect these so-called "pensions" are legal bribes.
The extent of the pension bribes problem can be seen in the scale of EU payments to UK politicians (who of course all became strong remain supporters):
You could also say that directly elected members go against the electorate due to party influence like the party whip system in the UK. Look at Brexit, it has caused economic harm to the UK, and this has caused support for it to drop; but MPs are not looking to change tack and "make the best of Brexit" (as polls suggest the populace wants), they're doubling down to make it worse.
"Democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others that have been tried". I would suggest the same holds for most of the variations, no system will keep all the people happy (or be perfect).
Personally I am prefer the grander bargains of democracy; transparency (vs back room deals), rule of law (vs corruption), and accountability (vs protection by / for the party). I also would prefer rationality over tribalism, but I suspect that might be too much to ask of humanity.
In the UK people vote for parties and not individuals almost all of the time, so the whip system is there to ensure people get what they actually voted for. A good example of where this disastrously failed is just after Brexit where a lot of MPs campaigned on a platform of respecting the vote, then did a 180 degree turn and refused to do so once in power. They all lost the whip and were kicked out of the party but then refused to call by-elections to let the voters re-decide. Eventually, Boris was able to call an election and every single one of those MPs lost their seats.
"Look at Brexit, it has caused economic harm to the UK, and this has caused support for it to drop"
Economic harm?! The impact of Brexit, if any exists at all, is unmeasurable because it's lost in the noise compared to lockdowns and trying to fight COVID.
What we can say for sure is that the people who claimed voting to leave would trigger an immediate recession were wrong. The economy grew in the years after the vote. Actual implementation was largely put on hold just months after leaving due to COVID and little has changed since.
So on the one hand you lament that EU commissioners are voted in by party blocs in the EU parliament. And yet on the other hand you say that people vote for parties in the UK (they don't they vote for MPs, regardless of their party affiliation is written on the ballot), and that this is good.
My point is that both systems are fallible and susceptible to both group influence (think peer pressure or the less charitable group think) and the influence of special interests; both good and bad.
As to economic harm, it is measurable and has been measured; even the Bank of England says that the UK will suffer more than other G7 and EU nations due to the current supply side inflation. The World Bank, the IMF, and many maket research firms have said very similar things based on economic data (FDI, trade flows, GDP, etc). If you want to eat a jam doughnut with extra cream and sprinkles, great, own it. Just don't be surprised if someone mentions that it isn't as good for you as a stick of celery. Sticking your fingers in your ears so that you don't need to listen to people telling you otherwise doesn't mean a doughnut is a stick of celery.
EU commissioners are not, in fact, voted in by party blocs in the EU parliament - they're picked by the President of the EU, who is selected by an opaque and dubious process behind closed doors. The description of it in the comment chain you're replying to is about right. In fact the winning party bloc in the EU parliament backed someone completely different as President and kinda ran for office on that basis but that didn't matter and van der Leyen got the job despite not being the chosen candidate of any party bloc, with the parliament merely reduced to rubber-stamping that decision.
People get confused about this because her predecessor Juncker supposedly got the job for this reason; in reality this was a ploy by well-connected EU insiders to make Juncker specifically President, and this rule has not been applied previously or since and likely wouldn't have been if some other party bloc backing some other candidate won instead.
You originally claimed "Look at Brexit, it has caused economic harm". A direct causal assertion. Now you've switched to "various organizations claim it will cause harm" which is a very different thing.
"you lament that EU commissioners are voted in by party blocs in the EU parliament"
Where did I say that? I said the opposite, right? That in theory they are appointed directly by national governments without EU parliament or Commission involvement (in theory, but apparently not in practice). EU Parliament can only fire the entire Commission at once, it doesn't select Commissioners and never has.
"you say that people vote for parties in the UK (they don't they vote for MPs, regardless of their party affiliation is written on the ballot), and that this is good"
No, because I didn't express any view on whether it's good or not, I described how the system works. Why do you keep putting words in my mouth like that?
"even the Bank of England says that the UK will suffer more than other G7 and EU nations due to the current supply side inflation"
Bank of England, IMF etc said a lot of stuff that turned out to be flat wrong about Brexit in the past. None of these institutions has any credibility. Every single one wanted Brexit not to happen for ideological reasons and created "expert" forecasts on that basis. A former BoE chief even said the entire profession of economics was in crisis, their prediction misses were so bad, and he's right.
At any rate, the more important point is that, again, trying to tease apart inflation due to fighting COVID from inflation due to Brexit is now hopeless. I'm not happy about that. I feel like COVID was a massive distraction and has largely prevented the government capitalizing on Brexit, and it also means we'll never be able to resolve this economic impact debate. The cost of lockdowns, mass testing, travel restrictions etc is so massive that Brexit is a mosquito in comparison.
"Sticking your fingers in your ears so that you don't need to listen to people telling you otherwise doesn't mean a doughnut is a stick of celery"
The people in question aren't neutral bystanders, they very much want certain outcomes (for ideological reasons). Brexit is neither a donut nor celery, it's merely a continuation of the long term trend towards decentralized governance - look at a graph of how many countries exist over time to see this. In such a way it can work out better or worse depending very much on your perspective and values.
> But was she not elected by EU members of parliment, who were elected by EU citizens?
The EU parliament can only "elect" a president nominated by the European Council, just like it can only approve laws proposed by the European Commission. It doesn't have the right of initiative, only veto power.
> But was she not elected by EU members of parliment, who were elected by EU citizens?
Yeah but no. I guess there's an electorate, as much as there's active components in homeopathic snake oil.
> I think it is more related to what powers they can exercise.
Nothing of that changes the statement that Mrs., err, von der Leyen is not directly voted by citizens. The word mongering is immaterial to the metacommentary on power structures. Which you acknowledge and leave pretty much unspecified. If I understand the top comment correctly, there is fear of corruption or whatever, and it's simply disengineous to blame that on the electorate.
As a point of reference, Fukuyama (end of history, etc.) outlines how corruption is a normal tendency en route to regulated democracies. In this view, where local patriotism and consequent nepotism are concerned, it sounds to me very much like the electorate shares in the blame, and that the organized societies on the next level, the model democracies, must have grown out of this.
I rather doubt that this is the case. Sure, the aristratic family name may be a statistical fluke, especially where family names pass through paternal lineages. It is nevertheless part of the bigger picture.
TL;DR: Yeah comissioners to the parliament are voted but no they aren't. This is not debatable.
While the parliament voted vdL they have very limited power. IIRC they can't really do much more than confirm the person nominated by the European council, which is not an elected body.
>EU is going to fail, it was never a good idea to begin with as it was dishonest from the start.
That's like saying that chemotherapy is not necessary because cancer is not a good idea to begin with. We need active action to end the EU. It's made of a clump of bureaucrats and oligarchs who are separated from the common rabble by several levels of people and who won't give up their seat ever.
Von der Leyen's cabinet is a pile of corruption and criminals. It's insane how many people in high EU roles are only there because they failed in local politics, or got caught in some scandal.
How do they say, "die EU nicht den Leyen überlassen".
She didn't exactly have a stellar reputation when she was defense minister. I don't think many people think that her performance in that office made her a candidate for other high offices.
I'm assuming there are no convictions (and hence are they really criminals if they haven't been convicted?), but I'd like to see the allegations for each member of the cabinet.
I think this is a trend in most European countries, to be honest. It’s all bordering on corruption, and on the EU-level, transparency is typically worse than on a national level.
Our prime minister in NL recently got away with using a Nokia 3310 to circumvent SMS retention laws, which could only keep a history of 20 messages. Of course, he cannot remember anything important he deleted. His excuse was that only this particular Nokia provided him with worldwide coverage.
It’s really sad that this type of behavior is the status quo for one of the more developed regions of the world.
in this case the situation is far worse and the whole debate on the lack of transparency on decisions taken to fight sars-cov-2 pandemic in eu is something lots of people are protesting .
If there were convictions that would project a very bad image of the EU and the west. The myth that the large scale corruption does not generally happen in the west would go bust.
convictions ? ina country where being caught passing sensitive information about currently running investigation to actual NEO NAZIS being investigated gets you promoted?
Sadly the EU Commission has a huge history of revolving door compensation for its officials and there seems to be no inclination to change this.
While it is different these days, an EU position itself used to be seen as a 'fin de carrière' (pre-retirement) financial bonus for national politicians, coasting out of public life while receiving an (in their eyes) earned sweet deal for years of laboring in the national political trenches.
The EU bureaucracy has around 33,000 civil servants, so it's not particularly massive. Compare with the UK government, which has around 475,000 civil servants. In fact, there are English local councils that have bigger bureaucracies.
And, of course, the EU has a bigger population than the USA. Why don't you check out how many Federal government bureaucrats there are, just for fun?
This idea that the EU is a massive bureaucratic entity is seriously, factually wrong.
> This idea that the EU is a massive bureaucratic entity are seriously, factually wrong.
that's because the EU uses national agencies to implement its policies
it is purely the super-high level management
e.g. the employees implementing EU farming/farming policy are employed by the member states goverments, aren't classed as EU employees and aren't paid by the EU budget, despite nearly 100% of their work coming directly from the EU
so of course it looks super-efficient, because national governments are paying to implement what it decides
this is in contrast to the US federal government, or your UK government/local government examples, which have to employ people to do the groundwork
if the spending was correctly attributed the EU budget would be orders of magnitude bigger, as would its number of civil servants
> this is in contrast to the US federal government
I strongly doubt that. The US federal government doesn't run all police forces in the US, or all the environmental agencies, or all the driving-license agencies or whatever. It runs some elements directly - as few as they can get away with, and shrinking.
The US is absolutely getting their hands on all text messages of EU leaders they can get away with with reasonable doubt... They'd be incompetent not to.
Absolutely, if VdL lost the confidence of the European Council, i.e. the governments that nominated her, she'd be out on her ass.
I agree that her nomination was a loss for Parliament in the constant, ongoing constitutional war of attrition between them and the Council. But that doesn't mean there is no way to force VdL from office if necessary.
A Commission President without the support of the Council would see all her proposals shot down immediately and all her commissioners resigning. It would be untenable and she would have to resign.
There is the law and there is the spirit of the law. After all, for centuries, UK parliaments didn't even technically have to hold regular elections if they didn't feel like doing it.
I'd love to know how you've come to that conclusion with such certainty, given nothing even close to it has ever occurred, and the EU's usual way of dealing with crises is to push them under the carpet and pretend there's no problem
At least one Commissioner was forced to resign already, after being accused of collusion with organised-crime, under President Barroso. One Commission President (Romano Prodi) was somewhat marred by accusations of widespread corruption towards the latter part of his mandate (iirc generically aimed at various Commission members and nominees, rather than himself, but still there were demands for his dismissal from various governments), saw his powers effectively curtailed, and his chances of a second mandate were wiped out.
Traditionally, nothing in Bruxelles get done without widespread consensus, including staying in power.
It's almost a certainty that these text messages exist somewhere, probably both in government surveillance databases and mobile carrier records. If the EU government really wanted to obtain/produce them, it could.
You sincerely believe that a recession of yet unclear magnitude will self—evidently “kill billions”, and that no comparable recession would have happened without the UN/western pandemic response? With such conviction that evidence is not even needed?
I’d love your input on some horse races coming up soon.
> no comparable recession would have happened without the UN/western pandemic response
I didn't say that.
> Evidence
Collecting and attributing evidence for this is quite tough. The costs are widely dispersed. Deaths will be attributed to "drug abuse", "suicide", "SIDS" all over the world. It won't be as clear cut as somebody dying of coronavirus.
> You sincerely believe that a recession of yet unclear magnitude will self—evidently “kill billions”
Yes I do. I think it is a logical conclusion to arrive at.
Consider the fact that the price of a 4th of July barbecue for 10 people was $59.50 in 2021. That number now stands at $69.68, an increase of 17%. Note that this does not include things like housing which is a big part of a person's expenses. To me, this means inflation in the last year is at least 17%, likely significantly more, once you factor in other essential expenditures.
A near 20% inflation rate is bound to kill people in the tens of millions (in USA alone). I am sure you would agree.
Now, is that a consequence of the insane money printing that the government did in response to the pandemic? To me, it seems self-evident. Pump in huge amount of cash into the economy and people have more to spend without a corresponding increase in "real value".
Consider that a similar story is playing out all over the world, in all major economies at a smaller or greater scale. Add up all the lives that will be cut short because of lack of medicines, lack of food, lack of infant care, lack of safe cars, over a period of years. I think the number is in billions.
So there’s no data on which to base these dramatic projections on ahead of time, and verifying it afterwards will be impossible because of misattribution.
I totally understand how you might be convinced of them regardless (we have to believe a lot of things by intuition), but that foundation doesn’t make for very persuasive internet comments, especially in a community with unusually high numeracy and strong intuitions of their own. Good luck to you.
Officials are usually elected because the people trust them (yes von der Leyen indirectly elected, but that's besides the point here). In geopolitical decisions for example, the people can't and shouldn't be able to know everything.
Trust is a process, not a static state. In order to trust someone you don't personally know, you usually need some level of transparency. Perhaps not total (as you mention, there is genuine need for some secrecy in politics), but surely much higher than the required level of transparency of random citizens.
Flip the situation around with a thought experiment:
How do I get a job within the EU Commission that will give me the opportunity to make millions for myself? Who do I need to "donate" to? Or do I need to become someone's obedient slave? How do I prove myself worthy?
Once in, what do I need to do to make as much money as possible for myself with zero negative consequences?
> How do I get a job within the EU Commission that will give me the opportunity to make millions for myself?
Simple! Be born into the wealthy elite or have very close ties to them (entrenched old money families) giving you access to enough funds, connections in the party and media, to campaign, advertise, win elections, and brush off all accusations of corruption and cronyism that could stick to you, while lying your way to the top by telling the rabble everything they want to hear (affordable housing, healthcare and education, lower corruption and taxes, higher wages and pensions, etc.) and once you're at the top, do none of those things and instead scratch the backs of those who helped you get there by giving them various tax breaks, lucrative government contracts, bail out their industries/companies, etc., and blaming external factors for making things worse for those who voted for you (Covid, Putin, China, immigrants, scalpers, terrorists, the boogieman, etc.).
Yes she had many corruption scandals and has already deleted data from phones that were subject to investigation. Germans pushed away the most corrupt politicians to EU Parliment often
> Von der Leyen, who was Germany’s defence minister before moving to Brussels, was engulfed in a similar scandal shortly after leaving Berlin for Brussels in 2019. She denied having anything to hide after it emerged that one of her two mobile phones being sought by a German parliamentary committee had been wiped.
> The committee had been investigating whether lucrative defence contracts were awarded to outside consultants without oversight and whether personal connections were behind those deals.
> The commission now says that it is unable to find such messages, but it previously argued that this type of "short-lived and ephemeral" communications do not fall under the scope of EU transparency rules on access to documents.
What. WHAT. How in the actual fuck is that a real argument they made? What the fuck.
Did they look in the same place that the evidence from Epstein's island is stored? Plausible deniability + "expert opinion" serving as the null hypothesis = institutional control of Occam's razor. I for one don't think there's anything about collusion or corruption here unless proof is presented... and since proof can't be found: nothing to see here, move along. I'm sure our government agencies and these multinational corporations have our best interests at heart.
> "The commission now says that it is unable to find such messages, but it previously argued that this type of 'short-lived and ephemeral' communications do not fall under the scope of EU transparency rules on access to documents."
I set up a unlogged jabber chat server at an institution subject to FOIA because you can get people to fall for this. Why not declare email ephemeral and delete them every night?
this would be a great opportunity for some people in their IT department to become whistleblowers. I bet there are quite a few people who know how to find the messages but have been told to not find them.
In the UK if you are asked to reveal your passport, you can get 5 years for simply forgetting it (not exercised yet as I am aware).
I think the case should be made so that if the messages are not found, the politician should be found guilty of losing messages and that should attract the same penalty as corruption.
They would make themselves bloody sure they retain the messages.
The amount of corruption in the UE is insanely huge. This has been going on for the past 20 years. I left and I am not coming back.
When I used to live in France, I paid between 70% and 75% taxes as a middle class employee. And you keep wondering, where does all the money go?
- Statistics do not look good ? Forbid the statistics
- Champion's league final, French/British/Spanish families have been threatened, attacked, stolen by hordes. Let's pretend it was because of the British fans, because a diplomatic crisis with them is a lot easier than weeks of chaos with the people living in Saint-Denis.
The economy looks bad, the idea of having one currency to accommodate countries with vastly different needs is a stupid idea.
Every time a country does not follow order, it gets threatened until it does.
Oh, and of course, the last time we ask the French (for example) in 2005, whether they agreed about the EU Constitution they voted "NO". But somehow, someone decided that it must have been "YES".
I'm sure there's nothing dodgy happening here. Let's just trust the experts and not let trifling matters - such as Pfizer having not that long ago received the largest fine in history for a healthcare company - could our judgement. Take the vaccine! Trust the science™!
Oooh dont be silly. Politicians only go to prison in east europe, as there is no corruption at the eu level or in germany (where she also destroyed evidence yet was promoted to chief of the eu):
The European Commission has been unable to find the text messages exchanged between president Ursula von der Leyen and the boss of giant pharmaceutical company Pfizer, the EU executive said in a letter to the EU ombudsman published on Wednesday (29 June).
Last year, the New York Times first revealed that von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla had been exchanging texts and calls for months to seal a deal for 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
The messages were then requested by journalist Alexander Fanta of news site netzpolitik.org, and a regular EUobserver writer, given the importance of the deal.
But the commission's refusal to grant access to these communications prompted the EU ombudsman Emily O'Reilly to criticise how the commission handled this freedom of information request.
Earlier this year, O'Reilly found that the commission staff had never explicitly asked the president's office to look for the text messages — calling on the EU executive to do a more exhaustive search.
The commission now says that it is unable to find such messages, but it previously argued that this type of "short-lived and ephemeral" communications do not fall under the scope of EU transparency rules on access to documents.
"The commission can confirm that the search undertaken by the President's cabinet for relevant text messages corresponding to the request for access to documents has not yielded any results," the EU transparency commissioner Vera Jourova said in the letter to the ombudsman.
The commission's response has been slammed by the ombudsman's office as "problematic" — with a full analysis expected to be published in the coming weeks.
In its response, the commission also says that it is considering recommending its staff not use messaging apps in a business context — which would, as a result, eliminate the need to keep a record of such instant communications.
Nevertheless, the lack of transparency surrounding these texts has triggered outrage among MEPs and civil society organisations — who criticised the commission for using tricks to avoid accountability.
Belgian socialist MEP Kathleen Van Brempt, who chairs the parliament's special committee on Covid-19, deemed the commission response as "unacceptable".
"The complete lack of transparency benefits the industry, not the European citizens," she tweeted.
The campaign SumOfUs has collected nearly 130,000 signatures in the EU to ask von der Leyen to publish the text messages.
Meanwhile, MEPs have been calling on the commission to reveal information on vaccine prices, since only a small group of lawmakers had access to heavily-redacted versions of the contracts.
This has a bit of a but-her-emails vibe to it. In an ideal world more official channels should have been used, but this was the height of the pandemic. If Von der Leyen had done nothing, it would be a way bigger scandal. I am glad the vaccine doses were secured by the european commission.
thats all well and good, assuming we use the same forgiving logic when you or I do something against the rules. But we dont. It seems that some are slightly more equal to the law than others
I live in the EU aswell, and in my country, the burden of proof for tax cases is reversed. The tax department can just invent their version of reality, and if I cannot disprove it, it sticks.
Yeah it’s sad to see EU bashing at this level on HN. Putin would love this. "EU is corrupt and rotten, save democracy and leave EU! Oh and leave NATO while you’re at it."
