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Comment by justnotsure | Hacker News Reader

what about the democratic process? The UK politicians are being punished over the UK/US extradition policy. Who in the EU are you going to punish if one day we wake up with TTIP on our backs? Nobody, because there is no democratic process in the EU. Are you going to vote EU Commission out?

The lack of democracy is no.1 problem with the EU. Any person who believes in democracy really can't say I believe in EU at the same time.

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Hu? The European Parliament is elected directly by the people (a bit too directly for my taste, in fact, I would have much preferred if the 5% minimum had been kept…). The commission is approved by parliament and suggested by the governments of the individual member states. The “corrupt bureaucracy” is put in place by the various offices (commission, council, parliament, CoJ etc.), just as in any other country.

What sort of democratic process would you prefer?

> The commission is approved by parliament and suggested by the governments of the individual member states.

The EU parliament approval is done in secret. So you can't hold responsible your elected official for supporting someone you wouldn't support. What is the point of having EU Commisars selected in secrecy? What is the point of having EU Commissars elections where there is only one candidate?

Why they can't simply follow standard democratic procedures? Why all the secrecy and elections over one-candidate? What is it? An USSR polit-biuro?

The secrecy is a fair point, but both secret votes and one-candidate votes are fairly common e.g. in Germany: both the chancellor and the prime ministers of individual states are voted on in secret in their respective parliaments (Bundes- resp. Landtag). There is also always only one candidate which either receives 50%+1 approval (and then becomes the new chancellor/prime minister) or fails and can either try again or make way for someone else.

I did not perceive this system as particularly non-democratic, especially since the actual MPs are elected in a decent way (not FPTP nor that strange electoral college used in US president elections).

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