The EU should abandon the stupid Commission structure and have a real Parliament that can actually draft legislation. The current one can just vote down legislation drafted by the Commission.
What they ought to do is have a process for passing EU-wide laws where they get introduced by a popularly elected legislature but to be enacted they also have to be approved by the majority of the legislatures of the member states. That gives you a good check on centralized power grabs because the member states have to approve anything that could usurp their role, but you can still pass things that make sense at that level like a common set of antitrust rules.
That’s similar to the original US model, except instead of the member state legislatures directly approving legislation, they appointed two proxies to the federal Senate. It’s a good system.
But being able to originate legislation in the directly elected legislature is important. Even the original U.S. constitutional design, which was quite anti-populist, made the directly elected House the main originator of legislation. (Either the House or Senate could do it, but only the House could introduce appropriations bills giving it primacy in the legislative process.)
The current system is new legislation has to be drafted by the Commission, which is the indirectly elected executive branch. That allows what would otherwise be popular proposals to never even be introduced. Whereas if you have legislation introduced by the directly elected body, popular proposals at least get a public debate and people get to see what they are and who is blocking them, but you still ultimately want the check on power grabs and populist nonsense before it actually gets enacted.
NO! Laws should be drafted by lawyers and professionals in those fields. An election would select lawmakers by popularity contest. Can't expect good laws from tht kind of people.
What's needed is accountability for drafted laws and removal of those who repeatedly draft laws rejected by parliament.
> and removal of those who repeatedly draft laws rejected by parliament.
While I believe I understand where you are coming from, this seems unduly broad and harsh.
What limit on time, number of attempts, etc. whould we apriori in advance place on laws like equality, climate monitoring, abortion rights, etc. before the gate is dropped on any more of that kind of thing?
Limits should not be placed on laws, but on law authors. Each one with his own count of rejected laws. Like this: author signs some drafts, drafts go to parliament, N drafts rejected -> author dismissed from Eu commision. It could even be a ratio of adopted laws vs. rejected laws. Drop below threshold -> dismissed.
And that's one of the main disadvantages of it. EU is trying to avoid those if possible, while still maintaining democracy's advantages. So far, this Commision / Parliament setup seems to be working just fine.