[lou1306]

The Council must go at some point. It is a "legislative" body... composed of members of the _executive_ branch of the individual countries. Granted, that's not the only problem with EU governance, but it is a rather glaring anomaly in terms of transparency and accountability.

Furthermore, at least in the case of Italy & other parliamentary systems, there's something like 3 levels of indirection between the people and their "representative" in the Council:

People elect members of the Parliament -> MPs decide who is the Prime Minister -> PM decides who sits in the Council

We should likely just replace it with either a "EU Senate", where each country elects the same number of senators, _or_ a chamber with truly European elections (as in, every EU citizen may vote for any candidate, regardless of their nation). But the latter option seems still out of reach as of today.

[fosk]

How are we going to change it? They are simply going to pass a second-reading on a proposal to bring it back and use the same trick over and over again. All it takes is for one person to be "sick" at home for them to get it their way.

The EU voters have practically gifted their future to a bunch of technocrats. Over time (decades), it will get worse too, as inevitably power corrupts them more and more.

The EU is simply never going to represent the EU voters when it goes against their agenda. Want proof? They just did it.

[lou1306]

"The EU" is a loose term. At least in _some_ cases (such as this one), the Parliament has shown more attention to the voters. I'll concede that the deck is stacked against it, but this reflects a common trend in the West of overpowering the executive branch at the expense of the representative bodies.

[rayiner]

Why not just have two bodies like every other parliamentary system? Europeans elect an MP and each member state elects a Senator. Then the majority party in the Parliament appoints a Prime Minister, who can appoint a cabinet. Nobody is more than two steps away from an elected position.

[lou1306]

That makes perfect sense indeed, although personally I'd prefer two senators per state. But since the EU as a political union is an afterthought of an economic union, it's full of loose ends like this. Also, national governments will be very reluctant to give up this kind of power.