[rbehrends]

What you are proposing would amount replacing the current bicameral legislature (with the European Parliament as the lower house and the Council of the EU as the upper house) with a unicameral legislature. That would actually make it easier for bad laws to be passed, especially as the supermajority required in the Council is currently the biggest obstacle for this kind of legislation.

I'll also note that nothing here is per se undemocratic. Both the Parliament and the Council are made up of elected members. The members of the Council (as members of the national governments) are indirectly elected, but elected all the same. Direct election is not a requirement for a democracy (see election of the US president or the US Senate prior to the 17th amendment or the Senate of Canada right now).

That does not mean that there isn't plenty of valid criticism of the EU's current structure, but claiming that it is not "actually democratic" falls far short of a meaningful critique.

[raxxorraxor]

Democratic or undemocratic are always subjective terms. For me personally, the level of indirection is a problem. This problem was known since the inception and the reason why the subsidiarity principle was underlined. Sadly, that doesn't seem to apply for important issues like chat control. Imagine accountability on a communal level. We wouldn't even see this crap.

You cannot just add 100 layers of indirection and call it as democratic as direct representatives of your smallest communal voting unit. Any mandate in more indirect position should become weaker if the only metric is indeed democracy.

[bluecalm]

I agree. Additionally systems where it's really vote for parties and not for people from your region results in elected officials being more loyal to the party than to the people. It would be significantly better if every region voted for their representatives. As it is if you don't belong to a party that gets 5% (or w/e it in your country) you will not be representing your voters even if you win in your area. Who runs in a given region is often decided by a centralized party leadership anyway. The people not only don't get to vote on issues but they can't even elect someone to represent them - just a party official designated to a given region.

[iknowstuff]

If you’re gonna have districts you gotta have MMP voting with a second party vote to preserve proportional representation

[dragonwriter]

Proportionality is always approximate, and you can have proportionality without party votes by having multimember districts with a system like STV, with the degree of proportionality dependent on district size.

Now, with what I think of as probably the ideal manageable district sizes for voters (5-7 members) that is fairly chunky proportionality, so you might still want to do MMP to reduce underrepresentation of geographically diffuse minority positions.

OTOH, there are places which have STV (usually for a whole body elected at large, but you could do the same thing in districts for a larger body) with 20+ seats in a single constituency, and if you go that big per district, MMP is less necessary.

[hopelite]

You got right to it with the “100 layers of indirection”. I like calling it democratic homeopathy, just with slow arsenic poisoning.

[HexPhantom]

The EU isn't undemocratic, but it feels undemocratic to many, and that's a legitimacy issue worth taking seriously

[Idesmi]

It is not democratic, as long as the President of the Commission is practically chosen by the European Council and the Parliament only can say yes or no.

And as shown in the last two terms of Von der Leyen, saying no doesn't actually do anything, because the same candidate can be proposed again.

[port11]

The EU feels undemocratic because it focuses on a lot of legislation that doesn't reflect what people want. It also works on some good stuff.

Over the past decade I went from a big fan to someone very troubled about the political goals of the elites.

And, having lived in Brussels, you can sorta see why they're disconnected from the “will of the people”…

[throw-the-towel]

What's the problem with living in Brussels? I'm not European, and very curious about that.

[inglor_cz]

They have their own neighbourhood and rarely mix with the rest of the population. Their Dunbar number (the max. amount of meaningful interpersonal connections that a person can maintain) is fully reached within that inner circle of European power.

Ironically, we managed to re-create a Forbidden City full of mandarins and eunuchs, or a new Versailles, only now they wear modern suits.

Scaling power institutions is always tricky, and this is the main risk.

[Freak_NL]

Good point. At this point I would not be averse to mandating baroque fashion for everyone involved with the EU in that quarter. Also, the yearly trek to Strasbourg shall be made by horse drawn coach (that'll put an end to that wasteful travesty at least).

[port11]

inglor_cz put it quite well.

Eventually it gets on your nerves how much worse the city has to be to cater to the Institutions.

There's something about non-taxed coddled elites eating oysters and drinking champagne at 9AM on a Sunday that makes you a bit of a cynic.

And then, of course, all your friends works for the research companies that get paid a fortune to provide advice to the Eurocrats. But well, your friend has a Bachelor's in Marketing and she's being considered an expert on Soil Research because… eh, the agency is getting paid.

The Bubble is there and you'll be exposed to it. It's not a good Bubble. It's mostly young MBAs and Political Science majors that think they know how to fix everything.

(And some very talented people, of course. It's not all bad.)

[moi2388]

It is undemocratic. Voting for only 720 people in the entire EU apparatus once every 5 years, whilst they are part of across-borders parties is not democracy but oligarchy with the illusion of choice.

Elected officials, elected judges and binding referenda would make it democratic.

[teekert]

We did not elect EU leaders. They keep secrets (COVID vaccin deals), they exempt themselves from ChatControl, they are obliged to store their communications yet internally recommend Signal with disappearing messages. Whats democratic about it?

[saubeidl]

> We did not elect EU leaders

Did we not?

I voted for the EU parliament. I voted for my government, which forms the council and appoints the commission.

[tremon]

The council is composed of representatives of each state. That means you did not vote for 26 out of the 27 members, and most states don't have special elections for European Council members* -- which means that most of them have not been elected into their Council position.

* the Council of composed of ministers and heads of government. Ministerial posts are distributed among the winning party members in pretty much every country, and only presidential systems have a direct election for their head of government. In constitutional monarchies, the head of government is commonly assigned to the largest party leader, but it's not a directly electable position.

[jurip]

The parliament seats are also apportioned by state. I don't find that a bad idea, living in a small country, and I don't see why the council seats being divided by country is a worse idea than the system in the parliament.

[flir]

I didn't vote for 649 of my MPs either. These aren't good arguments.

[saubeidl]

I mean sure. But that's how most democratic systems work?

A Californian did not vote for the Senator from North Carolina.

A Londoner did not vote for the MP from Edinburgh.

A Berliner did not vote for the Bavarian Bundesrat member.

[grues-dinner]

At least the Berliner gets an additional vote for the party so they can get both local and representative national representation.

The Londoner is completely out of luck if their seat is a safe seat but not their party.

Not that German politics isn't pretty hosed too.

[guappa]

The USA senate is another example of something that is not democratic. 2 people per state regardless of population is kinda questionable.

[tpm]

> What you are proposing would amount replacing the current bicameral legislature with a unicameral legislature.

Note they wrote "Start by removing...", not "Finish with". You could remove Council of the EU and then create another "upper house". But its personnel would have to be nominated differently. Perhaps directly elected? But that would be tough.

Re the direct vs indirect election, note that in some countries governments do not have to consist of MPs. Like currently in France, you have a directly elected president who then nominates whoever to be his head of government and ignore the parliament for a while. And that government has a say in the Council. And at that point it's good to answer the question, at which level of indirection can we say there is a deficit of democracy?

Also note that it's quite unusual for a democracy that the 'lower house' (EP) does not have legislative initiative, can't propose laws. Is that a deficit of democracy yet?

Of course I understand it's all because national governments do not want create another centre of power, but the issues are very real.

[hopelite]

You are not only being far too generous in your rationalization for how the EU is democratic and representative but are making category mistakes.

The founders of America were very much not fans of democracy beyond a loose similarity through representation of the will of the people, which is precisely why they had indirect elections of the US Senate and President that actually gave rural areas more power to balance and prevent power concentration in urban areas and the federal government. The federal government, what you think of as the USA, was never supposed to be this powerful.

It always baffles me that even in this programming, systems, networks, etc. focused community it seems that the majority of people have approaching zero ability to think through systems’ effects in a systematic manner.

Sure, call the EU democratic if you want to bend every characteristic, squint, ignore, stretch, and rationalize to the point of exhaustion; but no matter what, representative of the will let alone the interest of the people, the EU is not in any way. It is actually obviously and clearly a hostile and even an existential enemy of the various peoples and cultures of Europe.

Your category mistakes are made in things like calling the council the upper chamber. If you can ascribe that role to anything at all in the EU, you can squint hard and say that would be the Commission, but I even loathe saying that because it is also just so wrong because the EU is such a perversion of all systems associated with democracy. It’s basically all just a kabuki theater to give the illusion of authority through process. That is quite literally what it was designed for to defraud the people of control over their own government, as in the self-governance.

The council is a political body of coordination, it quite literally has no direct role on the legislative process and it also is largely comprised of people who are elected by several layers of abstraction and also basically just rubber stamp “laws” that went through the kabuki theater of fake democratic process.

It varies, but just take Germany as an example since there seem to beer many Germans here; Merz is the representative from Germany, he was not elected by the people, he was elected by representatives in the German lower chamber, which is comprised of people who are also not directly elected as Germany is a system of party politics where the best brown-nosers are elected among the party apparatchiks to represents the party in order of brown-nosing based on party election results. The people did not elect those representatives in the lower chamber.

For any Americans reading this, it would be like when you vote for your House Representative, you don’t actually vote for anyone who Is directly accountable to you as a person in the district, you vote either Democrat, Republican, {fill in the party} and then the party decides who it wants to send to the House after the election.

But it gets worse. That “election” of Merz was accomplished by an “alliance” of parties that include major losers of the last election and also excludes the major winners of that election in direct opposition of the will of the people, regardless of what you personally think of the parties or the electorate. So imagine if your party made major electoral advances, but it was still excluded from the government. And that’s just not even EU fake democracy, that’s just lower level German representative democracy veneer.

What you are trying to sell as democracy here, let alone representation of the will of the people, is basically nothing but the EU being democratic homeopathy, only it’s actually lethal and existential poison wrapped in delicious food… if I can extend and mix metaphors here.

America has its own problems and the current perversion of the government is a direct antithesis to what the founders created or at least tried to create; but at least for the time being in America, regardless of how perverted and polluted this subsystem has also become, Americans still can elect their representatives directly in the form of US House members that are directly accountable to the electorate.

The American system is many levels flatter than basically everything in the EU, not even to mention the several layers of abstraction from democracy on the country level, and ignoring the state level.

In effect, even though my EU friends seem to not want to believe their lying eyes because then it would make it true to them, the EU is an elaborate bait and switch to deliberately, methodically, and systematically disposed and depose the people of self-governance. It is why and how Europe is being at the same time dismantled and destroyed at its core, while at the same time being all polished and nice looking wrapped in all kinds of marketing propaganda/PR. It’s basically like a garbage construction mega-McMansion built on destroying several pristine, unique ecosystems that cause the extinction of thousands of species, but the conical owners who built it through loan fraud are extremely proud of their gaudy palace of decadence and self-destruction.