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Comment by munksbeer | Hacker News Reader

Please could you cite your sources for this.

I think what you've typed is not representative of what happened here. My understanding is that the EU Council forced this second-reading, not the Commission.

To provide evidence for my argument: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

Look at "Timeline". This is the Council, not the Commission. This is your elected heads of state. This is "democracy" in action.

"Council and EPP attempting to bypass Parliament With negotiators still deadlocked on core issues, the Council and the European People's Party (EPP) are trying to sidestep Parliament by reviving the expired Chat Control 1.0. The Council plans to fast-track a rewritten proposal with identical content, effectively circumventing the Commission's right of initiative, democratic oversight, and a fresh opinion from the European Data Protection Supervisor (source)."

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The Council must go at some point. It is a "legislative" body... composed of members of the _executive_ branch of the individual countries. Granted, that's not the only problem with EU governance, but it is a rather glaring anomaly in terms of transparency and accountability.

Furthermore, at least in the case of Italy & other parliamentary systems, there's something like 3 levels of indirection between the people and their "representative" in the Council:

People elect members of the Parliament -> MPs decide who is the Prime Minister -> PM decides who sits in the Council

We should likely just replace it with either a "EU Senate", where each country elects the same number of senators, _or_ a chamber with truly European elections (as in, every EU citizen may vote for any candidate, regardless of their nation). But the latter option seems still out of reach as of today.

How are we going to change it? They are simply going to pass a second-reading on a proposal to bring it back and use the same trick over and over again. All it takes is for one person to be "sick" at home for them to get it their way.

The EU voters have practically gifted their future to a bunch of technocrats. Over time (decades), it will get worse too, as inevitably power corrupts them more and more.

The EU is simply never going to represent the EU voters when it goes against their agenda. Want proof? They just did it.

"The EU" is a loose term. At least in _some_ cases (such as this one), the Parliament has shown more attention to the voters. I'll concede that the deck is stacked against it, but this reflects a common trend in the West of overpowering the executive branch at the expense of the representative bodies.

Why not just have two bodies like every other parliamentary system? Europeans elect an MP and each member state elects a Senator. Then the majority party in the Parliament appoints a Prime Minister, who can appoint a cabinet. Nobody is more than two steps away from an elected position.

That makes perfect sense indeed, although personally I'd prefer two senators per state. But since the EU as a political union is an afterthought of an economic union, it's full of loose ends like this. Also, national governments will be very reluctant to give up this kind of power.

The Commission refused to withdraw the proposal after Parliament rejected it, leaving it on the table. The Council disagreed with Parliament’s rejection, formally forcing a second reading.

Both the European Commission and the Council itself are not DIRECTLY elected EU bodies. Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto.

Again, sources?

Parliament rejects the proposal: https://oeil.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/en/procedure-file/pdf?r...

Council pushes it forward: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2026...

From the last article: "The Council position will now be examined by the European Parliament, under second reading.". Note that this is technically accurate under absolute majority rules for rejection (not for approving), but practically is where the "cheating" happens - as described in my original parent comment - because of the perverse procedures of the EU that are designed to basically make it almost impossible to go against the agenda.

The Commission did not withdraw it: no source because it stayed "pending".

The EU procedures are maliciously designed against the Parliament while preserving the technicality of plausible deniability. How do we call this architecture in software? We call it a "backdoor", except this one is embedded in the EU legislative process.

The EU Council are the democratically elected leaders of the member states. How is them deciding the direction not "democratic"?

The Council of the European Union - that pushed this forward - is composed of national ministers that are directly elected to the Council itself and are simply there because they are appointed as ministers under their own country's constitutional system. Ministers are appointed, not elected.

Unlike the European Parliament which is directly elected by EU citizens. Conveniently, the EU citizens have been silenced on this matter despite the Parliament denying this full proposal not once, but twice.

> Ministers are appointed, not elected.

I dont understand this line of reasoning about EU:

Ministers are appointed by people we vote. In most democracies the entire government is appointed and maybe indirect voted as a whole (by parliament and maybe directly by citizens).

What I am trying to say is people who proposed this are representatives of those countries (even if indirect their citizens votes vor the party that appointed them).

So representation is not the problem. The problem is citizens (at large) voting only on personal interest and not thinking or not understanding the second order effects. If you don't like what Council did here make sure next round of elections the party that proposed those ministers will not get elected in your country an should not have the power to form a government.

We seem to expect country officials to be even better when playing at EU level and think about yet a greater good than they are doing in their own countries.

The design of the EU which gives the member states elected politicians (heads of state) the most power is very intentional.

You are confusing the EU Council with the Council of the European Union.

No head of state was involved in the discussion we are having today.

By the way my personal opinion is that the confusing names are by design, to give the appearance that head of states are involved in decisions that have nothing to do with them, democracy in the EU is just an illusion.

You don't have effective representation just because a vote happens somewhere in a causal chain. A body that's appointed by people who are themselves typically indirectly elected is a lot of layers of indirection.

For effective representation, you need a feedback loop between the voting and the policymaking at the other end. If you add all these layers in-between, voters are going to have a hard time figuring out how their voting is actually changing outcomes. Imagine trying to play a video game that has huge lag between the control input and what the character on screen is actually doing.

I dont disagree. But I am also limited in seeing practical solutions to make EU better in this sense for people to feel represented at all levels directly. Please note the practical thing here cause idealist solutions I have plenty. It is just that countries are too nationalistic.

Why I find it hard: EU is another abstraction on top of what we already have: local, regional, national. EU is not just an alliance but a real governing body with legislative and executive branches.

Having an average (as in normal) citizen of a country have to think about their local interests, regional (as in around their local cities), national and global interests is too prone to manipulation. As we saw with Brexit and other campaigns. Too many of us are too focused on self interest and locality to be able to dedicate enough time to global matters.

IMHO of course

It seems to me that the nationalism issue is orthogonal to the representation issue. In the current structure, the EU government is even more powerful than the U.S. federal government. The U.S. federal government can only legislate in certain areas, and cannot compel the states to enforce federal law. This restriction is strongly enforced by the judiciary. That's why, for example, U.S. states effectively legalized marijuana, even though it's illegal under federal law.[1]

As I understand it, the EU can legislate in any area it wants. And member states are required to enforce EU law as if it were their own domestic law. The EU can even sue member states for failing to implement and enforce EU law.

So it seems like the EU government is both extremely powerful (the nationalism issue), but also very insulated from European voters (the representation issue).

[1] And I think most people would say that the federal government isn't even allowed to regulate individual use of marijuana. There's a 2005 Supreme Court case to the contrary, but I don't think it would turn out the same way under the current Supreme Court.

That is not true that EU can legislate anything.

Here is a clear list of areas: https://commission.europa.eu/about/role/law/areas-eu-action_...

Also EU does not have a government. There are 3 powers lets say:

- EU Council which represents the countries governments

- The EU Commission representing EU interests

- The EU Parliament representing citizens

We go back to what I said: when introducing a new level of abstraction we got a new governing power. But lets never forget that except the EU Parliament all the others are formed by people proposed by countries governments.

Thus as EU citizen one:

- influences EU direct by voting the EU parliament

- influences EU indirect by voting who rules their countries which will then send people to EU Council and Commission

As you notice the countries governments have more power (2 out of 3) than the EU parliament even if they are different kind of powers.

Still in the end each citizen that goes to vote is deciding the direction of EU in three ways (one direct citizen to EU and two indirect citizen to country to EU). Want more federalization then vote parties that go that way. Want more nationalism then vote that way. But nobody (or few people) really think then consequences of what they vote in their own countries and how that affects everybody in EU.

Eu cannot be bettered. It was transformed into a supranational institution that imposes its will upon countries. At this point its a detriment to the entire continent.

This is a bizarre argument. Emmanuel Macron sits on the EU Council. He has no democratic mandate?

The entire point of the EU design is that ultimately the member states national governments (the heads of) are the most powerful and set the direction. It was done this way because people didn't like the idea of EU ministers. There was even a huge objection to the change that introduced the Parliament, the MEPs that you are now saying should hold ultimate power.

And this is the problem. People decide up-front that the EU is "not democratic" and then they adjust their arguments and data to fit this narrative.

The EU Council and the Council of the European Union are two different bodies.

Macron sits in the EU Council and it has nothing to do with this.

In one you have the head of government of each member state, in the other the relevant minister depending on what is being discussed.

These are not European bureaucrats, they are the ministers of justice of each member state.

My apologies I was. But nevertheless, these are still these are elected representatives of the member states. These are not unknown "bureaucrats from Brussels".

it's more like a .. asymmetric confederation. Democratically elected leaders, conspire together in a confederation, to elect a body that is above and beyond the leaders of the democracy. I honestly don't think we have a proper label for what the EU [edit* council] has become. If you are looking at it from the OP's perspective, it's more of a "democratic deficit." It is an institutional design that prioritizes efficiency, expert consensus, and national vetoes over direct voter control and transparency.

> Democratically elected leaders, conspire together in a confederation, to elect a body that is above and beyond the leaders of the democracy.

Sorry, what are you talking about here?

The Commission is subservient to the EU Council. The EU Council consists, by design, of all the heads of the nation states.

False, the Commission is an independent EU institution.

The council is the prime minister or president (depending on the system). The commission is the government. The government mostly does what the PM/president tells it to do.

I think what you've typed is not representative of how EU works.

The Council [1], also known as the Council of the European Union and the Council of Ministers, does not consist of heads of state. The body that consists of heads of state is the European Council [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_European_Union

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Council

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