Comment by gls2ro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gls2ro | Hacker News Reader

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> 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.

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.

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.

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