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Comment by makomk | Hacker News Reader

I don't think we even can vote them out of office. All proposed EU laws are created by the European Commission, which is made up of unelected political appointees that aren't even meant to represent the views of ordinary citizens. We really have little say. The European Council is a little better in that it represents member governments which could be voted out of power, but unless there's a huge number of single-issue voters in multiple states who care only about this I can't see this having much effect.

Democratic accountability in the EU is incredibly weak, and the member governments seem to love it because it's great for creating laws they couldn't get away with at the national level.

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> I don't think we even can vote them out of office.

Of course you can. The European Parliament has the last say on EU laws. There's an upcoming EP election in only a few months. The head of the largest faction (essentially either EPP or ESP) will become head of the commission. There's few times as good as now to contact your local MEP and voice your concerns about article 13.

Yeah, and then we have to put pressure on MEPs again and again every time the bastards who can't be voted out of office try to push some new variant through, and the moment our attention slips and we let even one through they win. Permanently, since there's absolutely nothing MEPs can do to reverse this once it passes, unlike in an actual democracy.

You mean like in the US congress? Or the UK surveillance laws? Or the Australian security law that caused controversy recently?

> Permanently, since there's absolutely nothing MEPs can do to reverse this once it passes, unlike in an actual democracy.

So how's the reversal of the net neutrality decision working out in that democracy again?

>So how's the reversal of the net neutrality decision working out in that democracy again?

What do you mean? Those laws were successfully rolled back in 2017.

> There's few times as good as now to contact your local MEP and voice your concerns about article 13.

Practical question: how do I do it?

It's super simple: https://saveyourinternet.eu/act/

Choose your country, it'll open your mail client and then you can let them know what you think.

Thank you. At least I have a list of MPs to vote for in the EP elections.

I'm appalled to see a GroenLinks politician listed red. He's definitely going to get an email from me. The others too, but I really expect better from GL.

(The other GroenLinks politician is green, so it's likely that the red one simply missed the vote. Still bad of course, but not evil. He needs to show up next time.)

You're telling me, the only green Greek MEPs are the neonazis! What the hell is everyone else doing?

That's a tough one. Definitely mail all the red voters and explain your conundrum.

I did, twice! I hope someone read it.

> unelected political appointees

This has no bearing on the legitimacy of the EU. Members of the commission are selected by the democratically elected government of their respective countries.

People that downplay the democratic legitimacy of the EU really, truly, unequivocally do not understand what they are talking about or have a malicious intention.

Agreed. It seems to me like claiming UK is not legitimately democratic because we don't vote for the PM nor the Cabinet members...?

> People that downplay the democratic legitimacy of the EU really, truly, unequivocally do not understand what they are talking about or have a malicious intention.

I understand why people say this. The population have not directly voted for these commissioners. They can't simply vote them out. It feels like a step removed from the democratic process, and I'm not sure that's beneficial.

Legitimacy maybe, but democratic legitimacy is absolutely lacking. A country governed the way the EU is, would not be considered sufficiently democratic. The democracy for the commission is very indirect.

People vote for their national parliament. Parliament appoints a government. Those appointed governments then discuss who to appoint in the commission. Europarliament gets a say, but can only accept or reject the entire commission, not specific members in it.

The Europarliament is the only democratically elected body on the EU level, and its power is sorely lacking.

There general public has means of proposing legislation which requires the support of a 1 million EU citizens. But you have to search for it find it, and it seems the EU and MEPs have no desire to let the average EU citizen know about it.

I came across it some time ago and I will probably have to look for it again.

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