Why is it that European governments seem to act in the interests of their citizens and just about all other governments default policy positions is to act against the interests of the citizens?
Note that this article is about the European Parliament, which indeed acts very often in the interests of us, the European citizens.
However, that one is not the "European government". More precisely, it is only one part of it (depending on how strict you want to draw your analogy).
This is really a pity! There should be more power to the European Parliament.
On the other hand, if the European Parliament had more power, lobbyists would engage with it much more than they do now. So maybe it would then become as biased as all the national parliaments. However, I really hope that the European Parliament is able to retain its quality if it gets more power, which is why I'm a strong supporter of giving more power to the Parliament, and consequently taking power away from the Council and the Commission.
While we are at it: If you haven't already done so, you should go and become a regular supporter EDRi. It is one of the very few civil rights organizations that act on European level (not just national level). They achieve astonishingly much, given their low budget. Imagine what they could achieve with a real budget!
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14578358 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14577828
This is no surpise. Note that the European Parliament is not allowed to initiate new laws, so any new law has to start at Council/Commission, almost by definition.
(As I said: The European Parliament should get more power. Where else do you have a parliament with a missing right of law initiative? WTF?!)
All they can do is trying to shape the law proposals by Council/Commission into a less hostile version. Sometimes they are even able to turn things around, but that works not very often.
I've read a couple of his books and I've definitely become more skeptical of how the EU is currently structured (although still a Remainer) and much more sympathetic to the plight of the Greek people.
Moreover, given his political work, we can safely assume that he gained quite a lot of insights into the inner working of the EU. So his personal opinion that results from the experience is anything but irrelevant.
The structure is very close to that of a very powerful intergovernmental body, though, and there's not (yet?) a strong European polis/sense of shared identity. The democratic aspects of the EU as itself (rather than as a confederation of themselves-democratic national governments) are underdeveloped.
I don't know about that, there presumably has been research/surveys on it but are you making the statement based on assumption?
Even in the UK which is geographically separated, outside the Schengen area, and not part of the monetary union there is still clearly a lot of people who feel European.
In practical terms, as someone else stated, European Parliament elections are conducted as a series of more-or-less isolated national campaigns, with a weak sense of a body of citizens making a decision as a continental group.
This is perhaps beginning to change, with the Europarties nominating explicit lead candidates for the presidency of the Commission at the last Parliament election, which provides a certain cross-border unifying factor. It's notable that in my country (the UK) these candidates were barely mentioned, though, and the race was treated as a proxy fight for future control of the Westminster parliament, or as a chance to elect eurosceptics to protest the EU as a whole.
As a subject of Her Brittanic Majesty however, I'm about to have that citizenship forcibly removed. The only other option appears to be to become a political refugee. Like if a third of people in your region voted and suddenly you were no longer to be a national of the country you were born in; it's weird.
Is one is younger and hold higher education, one can more freely move between nations.
But if one is older, more settled with family and such, and perhaps has done industrial work for most of ones life, i suspect one see less benefits from EU. Heck, some of the directives may be seen as disrupting hard won job security.
Still, it's easily the most democratic part of the EU government, and should definitely have more power.
It is easy to represent someone when you don't have much power. It becomes harder when you have power. Maybe different people seek to become MEPs for example. As today it is not a very highly regarded political job IMHO.
But with greater power comes also greater media attention, I hope, and therefore more accountability.
It's also a way around the democratic deficit, though in reality the deficit is in government to government horse trading with plausible deniability ("the EU made us do it!"), not anonymous bureaucracy.
In the USA the federal government is seen as the "real" one and the States are the also-rand. In Europe it's the other way round. MEPs are elected really as proxy popularity polls on the home parties. And they undergo very little scrutiny of their actions at home. It's only when EU runs counter to a home country "third rail" that it gets reported - for example changes to agricultural policy. this is its strength and weakness (if every road and job susbsidised by EU was branded with EU logo on the pay packet (1,045 euros this month came from EU!) then it probably would be looked on differently.
The EU is mostly a positive boon for the world. But the lack of scrutiny leads to no system of checks and balances - which is not good in the long term.
In tech policy there are either no home country policies entrenched, or the different sides are not deeply entrenched (Security agencies love spying on email of course but it's only a decade or two)
So a sensible policy wonk can lay down really useful guidelines that help everyone. Because it so early in the game.
Being a sensible policy wonk and trying to fix agricultural subsidies where there are centuries of ingrained compromises is much mich harder
Trust me the UK gov is not down with this idea
This is painfully true, and the biggest hurdle IMO to solving the perceived "democratic deficit" of the EU.
MEPs should be banned from using domestic party branding on their material, and have to canvas themselves based on the bloc they plan to align to in the EU, and what that stands for. Only then do you have a hope of people educating themselves on which EU parties/blocs align with their own ideologies.
At the moment, standing based on domestic parties in an EU parliament election has about as much relevance as someone in a general election saying "Vote Jones, member of the local football club", but leaving off their party affiliation.
MEPs align themselves with the bloc their party is aligned with.
Perhaps it would be better if political parties had to include the branding of the European Parliament political group they're aligned with on all campaign materials (I'd go so far as to say this should also apply to national and local elections, if EU citizens can vote in them).
I disagree, that's like saying — MPs are allocated per constituency, voting based on local policies is the entire point of an MP. It's definitely a factor, but how many people voted in the last UK election based on having "a good constituency MP" rather than the party positions?
I think an MP's main job is to make legislation for the country as a whole — yes, she should inform her opinion through the lens of her constituency and her constituent's opinions, as well as her own, but she shouldn't only vote for things that affect or benefit them directly. So similarly, I'd want my MEP to make good European acts of parliament for the EU as a whole.
Telling me they are a 'Labour', 'Lib Dem' or 'Tory' affiliated gives me a hint as to their ideological background, but it's no match for something like the voting blocs issuing their own manifestos for how they'd like the EU to progress and develop.
I think if people want the European Parliament to become more accountable, you have to start engaging with policies (and politicians) at a supra-national level.
Of course MEPs are going to need to consider the EU as a whole, because in order to advance the goals of their constituencies they need to cooperate with the MEPs representing everyone else (and other EU institutions).
But expecting that you can ban MEPs from being a product of national politics or national political branding would be folly and undemocratic. That's what the EP is for, it's there to represent voting blocks within the nation-states that make up the EU, MEPs are explicitly not voted for across national boundaries.
Targeting MEPs to solve a perceived "democratic deficit" in the EU seems bizarre. They're the only directly elected institution, and they're the most locally accountable EU representatives or institution.
It seems to me what you'd like to accomplish here would be better solved by making the 28 members of the Commission directly elected across national boundaries by the entirety of EU citizens.
Then again, it looks like UK is about to leave the union[1], so their ability to influence policy at the European level is fairly limited at the moment.
[1] I would not be surprised, though, if both sides just dragged the exit out long enough so nobody will care about it any longer and then quietly drop the issue.
Also, most of us EU nationals don't see EU structures as very democratically responsive. Fairly sure most of us only send the B Team to the EU parliament. E.g retired national politicians, or people who couldn't get elected for national parliaments. Also, it gets a lot less coverage than national parliaments, so members are free to vote on random things without the same amount of scrutiny.
Granted, it would likely change it more controversial topics was handled by EU.
That was how the data retention laws were established before the European Court of Justice decided that it was illegal/unconstitutional (unsure what term to use here).
Whilst I got the same feeling, this really needs to be backed up by data. Do you know any reliable polls about it?
I have asked for numbers and the elections in different European countries this and last year did not show majorities of anti-EU feelings.
Netherlands, France, Austria, Spain, ... am I missing something?
The fact is only Greece has a majority that dislikes the EU (I'd say for obvious reasons). Not even the UK is polling that way right now.
"Since 2012, there has been a steady increase in Parliament of the fight against terrorism and respect for individual freedoms as a priority policy for the European Parliament, and this is now in second place (42%, +8 compared with 2015).
Meanwhile, some other indicators remain relatively unchanged. A clear majority of Europeans still believe that being a member of the European Union is a good thing (53%, -2), and that their country has benefitted from this membership (60%, =). Likewise, around seven respondents in ten think that there is more solidarity amongst Europeans than issues which separate them (71%, -3). Nearly one European in two also shares the opinion that a harmonised social welfare system reinforces their feeling of being a European citizen (46%, +1).
We also noted that the neutral image which Europeans have of the European Parliament (44%, -2), and the more significant role which they want to see it play (46%, +2), are two indicators which also remain stable. In addition, Europeans remain well informed about the European Parliament. Finally, other results show a decline in this survey. For example, Europeans feel that their voice counts less and less, both at national and at European level. However, in 26 of the 28 Member States, they felt that their voice counts more in their own country (53% in average, -10 compared with 2015) than at EU level (37% in average, -2). When asked about the future situation, Europeans are increasingly pessimistic, both in the EU (54% « things are going in the wrong direction », +13 compared with 2015) and in their own country (58% « id. », +14),
Among the various elements of European identity, a significant decline in the single currency as one of the essential elements is also noticeable (33%, -6), particularly in the Euro area."
Source: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/20161110PVL00...
I can't endorse those feelings so you can't ask much more out of me playing devil advocate.
I wouldn't call 'retired national politicians' the 'B' team, those are more likely the 'A' team, no longer worried about their career they are much freer to operate than their national counterparts, besides that they have lots of experience.
A Dutch example:
But there are definitely examples of driven 'A' team politicians in the EP. And those are more easily heard because of the lack of attention to the laid back types. So the possible higher amount of the latter isn't even an all black-white bad thing.
And since many are positive about the results of the EP: does it even matter?
But the Europarliament does seem to get used as a training ground for national MPs.
Also note most European nations have dramatically reviewed the election systems many times over the years. I believe France is at its fourth constitution :)
US and UK doesn't exactly have modern election systems, it works a bit better in the UK because it's smaller, but brexit still happened..
Such systems were "progressive" back in 1980's, remember.
I imagine the 3rd option (UKIP's favourite) would be the least popular and the EEA option "soft brexit" as the winner - which I feel better reflects voter sentiment... and voter ignorance: as EEA members still pay money to Brussels and are subject to regulation on goods and immigration. At least it would have made it clear to everyone in Whitehall that "hard brexit" was/is unconscienceable.
I'd actually bet that had you suggested this a year ago, the people on the remain side would be loudly objecting to it, rather than the other way around.
I suspect most people sufficiently informed about all the options would have voted 'No' already, as with that knowledge would come understanding of the risks voting 'Yes' would entail.
Are you trying to solve an ignorance/emotional/populist problem with logic?
The smallest percentage turnout in the EU Referendum was by those aged under 25. However, the largest percentage of Remain voters were also in this age group [2]. If voting was compulsory in the UK, it's reasonable to assume the extra under 25 voters would have swung the result the other way.
Oh, more than that. It's on its fifth Republic, but there were also a few constitutional monarchies in between.
Source (German): https://netzpolitik.org/2017/staatstrojaner-bundestag-beschl...
I expect that the law will be shot down by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Germany's Supreme Court), but it will be a few years until that happens because these processes take time.
Don't worry, US and UK will get there.