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Comment by olavk | Hacker News Reader

The EU is "Nazi like"? I think you will have to provide some justification for this claim.

With the speed the far right is gaining power - even if it is not - it will soon be.

The EU is certainly extremely undemocratic. We "elect" MEPs, who satisfy the illusion of democracy, but they can't actually do anything apart from rubber stamp the laws made by the unaccountable unelected dictators.

And the aims are clear - to unite Europe into one undemocratic state and remove individual countries and cultures.

And it appears to be completely controlled and driven by Germany.

What does this have to do with "Nazi-like"? Is "Nazi-like" just a shorthand for anything you disagree with?

If by "unelected dictators" you are referring to the council, these are ministers appointed by the democratic governments in the individual member states.

It is abundantly clear that the EU is a step backwards in terms of democratic accountability, by now there have been several laws passed in Germany for example that were based on EU decisions, which were later declared to be unconstitutional by the Bundesverfassungsgericht.

The opposit of democratic is not "Nazi-like". That just wording that derails any sensible discussion.

That's still not "Nazi-like". There are plenty of undemocratic systems that are not equivalent to the Nazi regime.

The commission can be toppled by the parliament -- it has been a real parliament for quite some time. Not only that, the European Parliament de facto has the right to dismiss individual commissioners and each individual candidate commissioner has to be accepted by parliament before they can be appointed.

(One entire commission was dismissed in 1999, a candidate was not accepted a few years back -- I think she was from Romania. Might have been Bulgaria, though.)

I'd say that as quite good as democracy goes.

Quite good? The people creating laws are still unelected. The EU has shown time and time again, that if they can't get what they want via the democratic channels (Referendums, votes, etc), they'll just steamroll it through anyway.

The EU is controlled by Germany, and its aims are to unite Europe into a single state. There is one winner in the EU project - Germany.

Hopefully in our lifetimes it will all collapse as the USSR did, and we will once again have a bit more freedom.

> The people creating laws are still unelected.

That is, by the way, true everywhere. In Western democracies, laws are typically initiated by a government who is not elected directly but formed by the parliament, based on who has a majority or who can come up with a working coalition. The the actual text of law is created, written, by civil servants who work for the government. It is reviewed by a number of unelected parties who propose changes. Then it is approved, or not, by the parliament. You cannot really say that you'd have "elected people creating the laws".

There are exceptions, of course; most notably the process in Switzerland where direct polls actually sometimes create laws and can even change the constitution. Elsewhere, this is uncommon.

'others do it as well' is a red herring. Let's focus on the core truth in relation to the EU: 'The people creating laws are still unelected'.

The MEPs are elected. The commissioners are appointed by democratic governments (and have to be individually accepted by the EP!). The two councils (no use in trying to distinguish them) consist of the democratic goverments in the EU.

European Directives have to be passed by the EP. You can't create European Law without directly elected MEPs.

"Extremely" is certainly a hyperbole. You can point out accountability problems in the EU governance system, which is based on a commonwealth of independent states tied together by the Treaty of Maastricht, and that some people want to convert into a federal USE (which I oppose), but "extremely undemocratic"? Bah.

No one voted for the Maastricht treaty. It was steamrolled through shrouded in secrecy.

Some people? Some people want to convert into a federal USE? It's there in black and white. Crystal clear. "Ever closer union".

You can oppose it all you like, but the people behind the project won't care one bit. The end game is a united states of Europe, with a single army, single parliament, abolition of individual state parliaments etc etc

Then when people have forgotten they'll just rename it United states of Germany. You can understand why those who don't win from a United states of Europe (Everyone apart from Germany), would associate it with Nazis.

At least I voted for Maastricht treaty (as a part of a referendum for joining the EU). In other countries, it was approved by the parliament whose job it generally is to approve of laws and international treaties.

France voted against the european constitution (referendum), only to see it instated through Lisbonne treaty, this time without referendum.. So much for EU democratic values..

France is still a democracy, and the democratically elected French parliament had the right to vote against the Lisbon treaty. Which they didn't.

For all we know they were bribed to make it go through. There is absolutely no accountability or democracy in the EU.

It is all right to point out that there are problems in accountability or democracy in the EU, but that "absolutely no" is so manifestly untrue that it takes away credibility from anything you say.

The constitution treaty (TCE) was rejected, and the Lisbon treaty is not the same. Lisbon treaty did change the previous treaties of Rome and Maastricht, but again, saying "only to see it [TCE] instated through Lisbonne treaty" is disingenious.

The Lisbon treaty does not cover the same things as the TCE did, only a subset of which there was consensus.

In Ireland we voted on Lisbon until we got the right result. Makes a mockery of democracy.

Ignoring the fact that the question of a referendum for european treaties is one to be had at the national level, as each country can decide that for itself, the statement "No one voted for the Maastricht treaty." is demonstrably false as both the French and the Danish people did vote for it.

It's ok to have a difference of opinion, but please keep your facts straight.

I think he doesn't have to do that. It's not a comparison he needs to prove for me. Not that I agree, but it shows his feelings, and it probably shows the sentiment of many Greeks.

Hacker News isn't generally the place for Reddit-style emotion baiting; the request for proof is another way of saying "don't just rant, help us be objective." An opinion isn't of much use if it's baseless and prejudiced.

As it is, the comments about British and US interventions in Greece are illustrative of what I'm sure is a modern history of Greece less known internationally and are surely interesting.

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