Comment by emptysongglass | Hacker News Reader

Comment by emptysongglass | Hacker News Reader

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I wish we citizens of countries in the EU would stop bending over backward to apologize and explain away these undemocratic institutions. "Oh but don't worry those unelected officials can't pass laws, just propose them." "Oh but actually this other body is directly elected unlike these other folks." "Oh it's actually democratic because we voted those other folks in who elected them in."

Like c'mon folks. It sucks. It's really bad. We should do something about it and stop falling all over ourselves to explain how it's not that bad. You don't think the actual lawmakers are listening to their advice? Of course they are. They elected those proposers.

This weird defense we keep rallying to is tiresome. It's ok to criticize the EU. It's really not a paradise in any sense of the word and many, many of its constituent countries look far less democratic than the US.

I think you and I mostly agree here.

My point is that the EU commission is bad, its a shitty system that doesn't work well and needs to be reformed. Pointing at the EU as a whole and saying things like "The EU was caught..." lets the commission (and this commissioner) off the hook.

If we clearly say that the EU parliament works pretty well, and the commission doesn't then its obvious what needs reforming. If you just point at the EU as a whole then the problem looks impossible.

By the way I am no longer a citizen of a country in the EU, I'm from the UK (although I happen to live in the EU currently).

The european commission is elected, just indirectly. It is proposed by the european council, and the european parliement says yes or no.

Saying that indirect elections are undemocratic is like saying Switzerland is not a "liberal democracy" because its federal council is elected by the federal assembly instead by direct popular vote.

That's a terrible argument and one that gets trotted out every time. We can do better than this. We should.

The CPC governing bodies are indirectly elected too, by members of the Party, of which most anyone can join. That doesn't make it democratic.

Let's not play fast and loose with democracy here. We deserve, and should agitate for, more representative democracies else we slide slowly toward the very tyrannies we oppose.

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