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Comment by AlecSchueler | Hacker News Reader

The EU is a democracy.

Like the average EU citizen, I don't remember ever voting for anybody who represents me in the EU and I don't know any of the structures of power of the EU or how they work.

The last election was in 2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_elect...

To the figurehead, talking shop parliament. Effectively all the power in the EU belongs to the commission, which is appointed not elected.

And who appointed them?

All political systems have delegation.

Everything you need to know about the European Commission and more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission

In most European countries, people don't elect the national government directly as well; it's formed taking into account parliament elections. It is true that in the EU the appointment of the commission is a bit more removed, with the national governments involved in the choice of the President and the commissioners, but in any case the European Parliament must still approve the commission.

EU Comissioners are proposed by the Council of the European Union, a body composed of EU member state ministers, themselves directly elected by the citizens of their respective states in national elections. Appointment of Comissioners follows the suggestions of national governments.

I don't know of any EU country in which ministers are elected as ministers. Many are elected as MPs and then appointed ministers, but this is typically not a requirement, and you can easily have unelected ministers. Even if 100% of all ministers were always elected as MPs, you couldn't just argue "was elected for position X, must therefore automatically be considered democratically legitimized for position Y".

>> Many are elected as MPs and then appointed ministers, but this is typically not a requirement, and you can easily have unelected ministers.

OK, I don't know that. Is that the case in EU countries? If so, which ones?

Anyway I didn't say that ministers are elected as ministers, but to my knowledge for someone to be appointed a minister they must be elected into parliament. Again, if that's not the case please explain.

> Anyway I didn't say that ministers are elected as ministers, but to my knowledge for someone to be appointed a minister they must be elected into parliament.

That might be the case in certain countries, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_the_United_Kingdom says: "In the United Kingdom's parliamentary system, the executive is not separate from the legislature, since Cabinet members are drawn from Parliament."

It's not the case in other countries. Recent examples from Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monti_Cabinet and Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bierlein_government. Admittedly these are interim governments formed entirely from non-politicians, so a special case. But there are also examples of individual non-party people being ministers in "normal" governments. Again Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kern_government (the "Independent"s were never MPs). Of course this is rare, since usually there is an expectation of party members to get the posts.

Are you sure this is the case, about the Austrian Independents? It's not very clear from the wikipedia articles on the persons and on the institutions.

In any case, it looks like the Austrian ministers are figurheads without real political power, or so I gather from the relevant artice on wikipedia:

Austrian presidents gladly accept that their role is that of figureheads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Austria

But I may not be reading all this carefully enough. Still, this seems to be something ... peculiar to Austria?

You misread "president" as "minister" and ignored the fact that (at least) Italy often has expert cabinets, and this whole discussion is pointless anyway since at most what we would be able to establish is that the EU Commission's democratic legitimacy, if any, is through three levels of indirection, which is not a lot of legitimacy.

I did indeed misread "president" as "minister", but I don't agree with you that "indirection" (i.e. appointment of officials by elected officials) is "not a lot of legitimacy". It may not be "a lot of directness", but I'm not concerned about this any more than I'm concerned that, e.g. police officers or judges are appointed, rather than elected (certainly in the places I've lived).

Edit: I don't agree that there is as much indirection as you say, either. You brought up two examples of interim governments where ministers were not elected. You haven't given any examples where this happens in er, ordinary? governments and I don't believe there are any in the EU. But I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.

Euh, no it doesn't...

I learned the political structure of the European Union in school, several times, once in middle school, once in high shool, with many repetitions in between. If you haven't learned you might either be older than me (I'm near thirty) or the education system in your country has worse issues than mine, or just not interested in Wikipedia ?

Interesting. I see you are French--that makes sense, since it's only France and Germany ruling the EU.

This is an absurd big lie which is so often repeated. Germany has great influence because it pays so much for the EU but all member states have the veto...

Turnout in Spain for the 2019 election was pretty high at 60%, compared to average of 50%. Counter to your (somewhat xenophobic) remarks about France and Germany, the most engaged countries by this measure are Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta and Denmark.

EU parliament members maybe? Does that sound a ring to you?

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