Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mbivert 534 days ago
Let's look in practice[0]: there's 720 seats in total for 2024. France has 81, spread on its local political spectrum [1]; biggest group has 18 seats. So while there's some democratic oversight, the public perception remains reasonable: the representative weight of an individual is severely diluted (divide & conquer, yada yada).

As it plays on the democratic oversight perception as well, we could also look at the perception/quality of the locally elected bodies, and their general attitude towards the UE: a great example is [2] ("let's ask the people but do it anyway").

That's to say, I believe there are good reasons for people to perceive EU laws as imposed without democratic oversight. It's not 100% true, but overall, it's not an unfair qualification either.

[0]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/infographic/meps-seats/index_...

[1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_d%C3%A9put%C3%A9s_eu...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constitut...