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Comment by yostrovs | Hacker News Reader

I'm getting the impression that many Europeans don't seem to have a grasp on how their laws are passed. Is my impression correct? I'm baffled by the commission, Parliament, individual states, and how they interact to make laws. Is this topic teachable to 3rd graders in Europe?

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Yes, that is unfortunately the case. Exactly this is creating a feeling amongst many of us that something is fundamentally wrong with the EU as governing and legislative body. Of course, you could reverse that and say: People have to inform themselves properly. But that's just the situation were in right now.

Most of those citizens don't speak any of the languages that the EU operates in. And the EU only translates the result of the legislative process, not the process, so participating in Polish or Greek ... or even French ... is almost impossible. Eventually the outcome of the whole process is translated, but that's it.

And starting next year there will be exactly 0.9% [2] of the citizens that speak the language that the EU government conducts itself. Now it is 13.9% [1], which is not exactly a good number. As if it wasn't already a huge problem that the French and German governments essentially control the EU.

Combine that with the fact that large blocks hate eachother. Like famously the French and German governments, for example, but those are hardly the only examples. Some blocks have actually recently had shooting conflicts with deaths (the Catalan and Spanish governments, if you're wondering, and yes, both have representation, even though the Catalan government gets no representation in the commission or council, the only institutions with real power in the EU).

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(british+population+%2B...

[2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(irish+population)%2Feu...

One could say the same thing about americans and it would probably just as true/false.

Me personally I'm not into that kind of generalisation.

It is taught in schools all over the EU, but the EU is a "new" thing.

I believe most Europeans don't know much or anything about the EU, because our states retain a lot of power, so we already have enough to deal with.

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