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by peterfirefly 3976 days ago
The commission can be toppled by the parliament -- it has been a real parliament for quite some time. Not only that, the European Parliament de facto has the right to dismiss individual commissioners and each individual candidate commissioner has to be accepted by parliament before they can be appointed.

(One entire commission was dismissed in 1999, a candidate was not accepted a few years back -- I think she was from Romania. Might have been Bulgaria, though.)

I'd say that as quite good as democracy goes.
1 comments
fooballs 3976 days ago
Quite good? The people creating laws are still unelected. The EU has shown time and time again, that if they can't get what they want via the democratic channels (Referendums, votes, etc), they'll just steamroll it through anyway.

The EU is controlled by Germany, and its aims are to unite Europe into a single state. There is one winner in the EU project - Germany.

Hopefully in our lifetimes it will all collapse as the USSR did, and we will once again have a bit more freedom.

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ptaipale 3976 days ago
> The people creating laws are still unelected.

That is, by the way, true everywhere. In Western democracies, laws are typically initiated by a government who is not elected directly but formed by the parliament, based on who has a majority or who can come up with a working coalition. The the actual text of law is created, written, by civil servants who work for the government. It is reviewed by a number of unelected parties who propose changes. Then it is approved, or not, by the parliament. You cannot really say that you'd have "elected people creating the laws".

There are exceptions, of course; most notably the process in Switzerland where direct polls actually sometimes create laws and can even change the constitution. Elsewhere, this is uncommon.

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vixen99 3976 days ago
'others do it as well' is a red herring. Let's focus on the core truth in relation to the EU: 'The people creating laws are still unelected'.
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peterfirefly 3976 days ago
The MEPs are elected. The commissioners are appointed by democratic governments (and have to be individually accepted by the EP!). The two councils (no use in trying to distinguish them) consist of the democratic goverments in the EU.

European Directives have to be passed by the EP. You can't create European Law without directly elected MEPs.

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