[denton-scratch]

OK.

Politically, there are no shared constituencies. I don't mean in the sense of individual candidates; I mean there are no cross-border leaders or parties. We barely know the names of the party leaders in neighbouring countries. The EU is a treaty organisation, not a shared democracy.

Policy initiatives come from the Commission, which is a collection of political has-beens, failed politicians that are of no further value in their own countries. The European Council is simply an ad-hoc gathering of representatives of the government of the day in their respective countries; as a body, it has no legityimacy whatsoever. The third leg of EU "democracy" is the EU Parliament. Apart from it's lack of electoral legitimacy, it was deliberately made feeble. It can't initiate legislation. Debates in the parliament chamber are so polite and decorous that it's impossible to stay awake - nobody listens to broadcasts of proceedings in the EU Parliament.

The EU is very corrupt. To a large extent, that is because it is free from proper oversight; in theory, the Parliament is a constraint on the power of the executive (the Commission). In practise, the EU has exercised that power only once, when it became clear that roughly all Commissioners were corrupt. The only power they had was to sack the entire Commission, which they did. Once. And it didn't make much difference. The Parliament's powers have since been increased a little, I know.

In theory, the EU has a border with common rules. In practice, that's not how it works; EU member nations just love it when the refugees they have admitted decide to leave for another European country, relying on Free Movement. They build fences to stop people entering, but not to stop people leaving.

A number of very authoritarian countries from the East were admitted to the EU a couple of decades ago, and they are doing things like sacking judges that disagree with the government. The EU is doing nothing to prevent this kind of behaviour, although it is a violation of the treaties between member states. I don't want to be in a treaty organisation with racists and dictators.

There; I hope that helps.

[bobmichael]

Thanks, it does help to get different opinions, as I'm new to EU citizenship and still forming my opinion. Do you have sources for some of the claims you make? Asking out of curiosity, not doubt, as I'd be interested to dig deeper.

Also curious what you think of the perspective that acknowledges most of the dysfunction you're naming while considering it part of the growing pains of figuring out how to do transnational politics as a species. RE no cross-border parties, what about parties like Volt Europa?

[denton-scratch]

You can read up on EU political institutions on Wikipedia, but it's pretty tiring stuff. It's complicated because it consists of a sequence of treaties, each extending its predecessor. International treaties are pretty turgid, and Wikipedia doesn't do a very good job of making them clear.

I don't know anywhere there is a clear, plain and unbiased presentation of the EU institutions.

As regards growing pains, I think the problems are not a matter of adjustments that need to be made; they are fundamental to the principles of the EU. The idea was to create a region where nations would not go to war with one-another, because they were bound together by trade.

For that to work, trade had to be conducted on a level playing field; that meant free movement of capital and labour, so that corporations could invest where the profits were greatest. At the same time, there had to be controls on government subsidies; governments were supposed to privatise everything, and could not use taxpayer money to help their national champions.

The UK privatised nearly everything; other countries weren't so enthusiastic.

Without these rules, the EU is nothing.

I don't see how the EU can "grow up" out of that. It's not a set of policies, that can be tweaked by a stroke of the legislative pen every few years; it's a bunch of international treaties, with 27 signatories, with many of the signatories having held national referendums on them.

Regarding "Volt Europa": I've never heard of it. Are they new? They've never canvassed me, so perhaps they came into existence since Brexit. Ah - in the 2021 local elections, Volt UK stood one council candidate, somewhere in Warwickshire. They've never stood a candidate for the UK Parliament, nor any European Parliament candidates. They've never won an election. Apparently they are federalists; even among pro-Europeans in UK, not many want to subordinate the UK to an EU super-state.