[wqaatwt]

> The EU is a parliamentary democracy

Except the are a couple degrees of separation between the democracy part and in the running the EU institutions.

The EU parliament is also a very superficial imitation of a real parliament in a democratic state. It has very limited say in forming the “government” or decision making.

> result of the EU being a club of sovereign democracies

So either revert to it just being a trade union or implement fully democratic federal institutions. The in between isn’t really working that well.

[Certhas]

It isn't working well by what standard?

[saubeidl]

> Except the are a couple degrees of separation between the democracy part and in the running the EU institutions.

That's what parliamentary democracy means, yes.

[wqaatwt]

No, of course not...

In parliamentary democracies the parliament is elected directly and is generally sovereign (optionally constrained by a constitution or some set of basic laws and powers delegated to regional governments and such).

In no way does that describe the EU. It has no equivalent body. Its imitation “parliament” is extremely weak and barely has a say in who forms the closest EU has to a “government”.

[saubeidl]

But the parliament isn't the government in a parliamentary democracy.

[wqaatwt]

Yes, and? It forms the government and can dismiss it.

[exe34]

They can also vote on bills, while we're bringing up irrelevant gotchas.

[Certhas]

So this is typical of criticism of the EU democratic structure: It's just factually wrong. The EU Parliament can dismiss the commission. From Wikipedia:

"The Parliament also has the power to censure the Commission by a two-thirds majority which will force the resignation of the entire Commission from office. As with approval, this power has never been explicitly used, but when faced with such a vote, the Santer Commission then resigned of their own accord."

The fact that the whole democratic setup is highly complex is in itself a problem. But the concrete deficits people mention are never true or don't apply to other democracies either...

In practice the EU Parliament has been a lot more trouble for the executive than is typical in national bodies. The one valid point is that the parliament does not have the right to initiate legislation itself. That is unusual, but in practice many people who are actually close to political processes seem to say this is mostly symbolic, as national bodies can't really draft effective legislation without cooperation from the executive either... Stil definitely something I would love to see addressed.

[Certhas]

The parliament approves and dismisses the commission.

In the last cycles the candidate who led the party who won the parliamentary elections became head of commission.

So this is just wrong. The EU parliament has more power than US Congress or the UK parliament in this respect.