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Comment by tugu77 | Hacker News Reader

That's a lot of BS.

The European Parliament is elected every few years by citizens in all member states.

The European Commission is nominated by the European Council and and confirmed by the European Parliament.

The European Council consists of government officials from the member states where they have been chosen by national democratic processes.

It may be a little complicated, but it's all rooted in democratic processes. Please stick to the facts and keep the populistic anti-EU nationalistic propaganda to yourself.

(Every kid in the EU has been learning those basic facts in school for decades, making it surprising that this populist nonsense still catches on with so many people. I have an easier time forgivin non-EU folks, but even those should check the facts before claiming things.)

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> The European Commission is nominated by the European Council and and confirmed by the European Parliament.

> The European Council consists of government officials from the member states where they have been chosen by national democratic processes.

I disagree. Successful elected government officials from member states aren't governing the EU Commission and Council. They're governing their own member states, where they are elected by the public.

Unpopular, unsuccessful ex-government officials from member states are governing the EU, where they are appointed by bureaucrats.

Just look at the uninspiring Commissioners we've suffered over the last few years.

It's telling that the Von Der Leyen Commission scraped in with just 51.4% of MEP votes.

https://facts4eu.org/news/2024_dec_unpopular_eu_I

In her home country Germany, only 33% said she'd make a good Commission president.

https://www.politico.eu/article/most-germans-skeptical-of-ur...

> Unpopular, unsuccessful ex-government officials from member states are governing the EU, where they are appointed by bureaucrats.

Von der Leyen was not appointed by bureaucrats.

> It's telling that the Von Der Leyen Commission scraped in with just 51.4% of MEP votes.

That's nothing special in European voting systems. Various governments (regional or country wide) in Germany have small, but relatively stable majorities provided by coalitions. That's very different to the mostly two-party systems in the US or the UK.

> Von der Leyen was not appointed by bureaucrats.

It's not clear who specifically did the ceremonial nomination, but it was probably the CDU bureaucracy that made the decision.

The "CDU bureaucracy" ? What is that? The CDU is a political party.

Generally about the appointment of the commission:

https://commission.europa.eu/about/organisation/how-commissi...

> The "CDU bureaucracy" ? What is that? The CDU is a political party.

Right, and like most large organisations it has a bureaucracy.

> Generally about the appointment of the commission

Right, note the vague "suggestions from member states". (Also note that the claimed accountability points have never been activated in practice)

The CDU is a large party, not a particular large "organization" in terms of full-time CDU employees. The bureaucracy of the CDU is in no way responsible for nominating/selecting the EU President of the Commission.

Ursula on der Leyen was 2019 supported by Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany) as the future president of the EU commission. That's no secret. Macron also supported her. The European Council then nominated Ursula on der Leyen and she was accepted by the European Parliament. The Parliament is directly elected the citizens of the European Union.

The election of her was kind of unfortunate, since it was signalled by parties that the election to the parliament will also find the proposed EU commission president. But that was not the case. Since a candidate was not found (various parties and governments were not happy with the proposed candidates), the European Council finally proposed Ursula von der Leyen, which then also got a majority in the parliament.

51.4% is a majority. You are free to disagree again, but that won't change the facts. You can just as easily disagree about gravity, evolution or climate change. Still won't change them.

Look, I don't like lots of things about the EU either. But the first step to being able to change sth is to acknowledge the facts. Claiming that von der Leyen wasn't democratically appointed is similar to Trump claiming the 2020 election was stolen. Not a great start.

> democratically appointed

Now there's an oxymoron if ever I saw one!

Where democracy is involved, we use the word "elected" -- not "appointed"

That was always one of the issues with EU, and EEC before it, membership in the UK. There was no education as to the change in constitutional status, nor explanation of how the EEC (then EU) actually worked.

Most folks still had the view that UK Parliament was in charge, not really appreciating the change. That also applied to our MPs, hence the Factomane cases.

Now if there had bee proper education in the UK as to the impact of EEC and EU membership, possibly Brexit would not have happened.

Sadly this 'populist nonsense' has even infected some prominent public intellectuals. Doubtless your comment will put them straight.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/crisis-behind-the-euroc...

From Chapter 6: 'The Inherently Undemocratic EU Democracy'

'A number of prominent public intellectuals put pen to paper to warn not only of a crisis of European democracy, but of a crisis of the very ‘political institution’ of democracy, and particularly its representative and liberal variants. Contemporary manifestations of the ‘hollowing out’ of democracy following the Eurocrisis have taken many forms and several contributions in this volume have dealt with various aspects of the phenomenon.'

' .... a crisis of the EU’s own democratic credentials. Even as they insisted on its purely economic character, commentators were quick to criticise the undemocratic form that the emergency EMU-related responses to the Eurocrisis came to assume, particularly at the European level, where not only parliamentary processes, but also the Treaties’ legal prescriptions, were systematically circumvented'.

The EU has certainly its issues, no doubt about it. They need to be pointed out and addressed for sure. We are not in disagreement there.

But the flat out denial that EU is in principle a democratic system is just a too simplistic view. It tends to be mostly touted by those populists who ultimately would like to see an authocratic state with themselves in charge.

I think it makes a lot more sense that there's a lot of (especially rich people and US folks) that desperately want EU to fail - either because they're deeply nationalist, see a profit motive or just hate foreigners.

Those will craft narratives that are patently untrue to drive their agenda.

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