[waps]

The EU commission (which is the unelected organisation that actually decides) simply wants power, so if Turkey wants to join and play Trojan horse, they will certainly let them.

Because of this, and regardless of the Turkey issue, can we please stop referrring to Europa, or the European Union as "democratic" ? It's not. Let's just stop pretending.

[tomp]

> The EU commission (which is the unelected organisation

What are you talking about? It's elected, maybe not by the people directly, but by their (elected) representatives. That's the same as saying that the US president isn't elected, because s/he isn't elected directly by the population.

> the European Union as "democratic" ? It's not.

Care to substantiate that claim?

[true_religion]

In practice, the US president is directly elected by the population. Every state has a law declaring that their electors (the representatives that really 'elect' the president) will follow the majority vote counted within that state.

Granted, if you look at wikipedia it'll say its an indirect system, but that's only a technicality.

[tomp]

Ok, then I was wrong. I've previously heard that in theory, the electors could change their mind, so that's why the parties only nominated their most senior, most trusted members for electors.

[selectodude]

You're technically right (the best kind of right) but in practice, that hasn't happened in probably 250 years.

[waps]

Euhm no. The distance between the commissars and elected officials is much bigger.

They're appointed by vote by foreign ministers of the member states (as a group, they can't include or exclude individuals), who are elected as a group (again, no apointing individuals) by the local parliaments. By that standard, the new CEO of Microsoft is an elected official. Also note that most European commissars are not appointed by the current governments of the member states.

As if that's not bad enough, why don't you look at the results of European referenda, how the people voted on the creation of Europe in the one instance they were asked.

Let me help you out with the links :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_re...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_European_Constitution_ref...

Several other referenda that were planned were canceled, for reasons that I'm sure had nothing to do with how people were voting.

[bowlofpetunias]

Why are people downvoting this?

There is absolutely nothing democratic about the EU.

[illumen]

"The European Parliament is elected every five years by EU citizens."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union

[bowlofpetunias]

The European Parliament has neither serious power nor a mandate. Most voters don't bother to show up. It's a circus act, not a congress of people's representatives.

In fact, it's very existence doesn't have a mandate. We never agreed to surrender our national sovereignty to a European government.

When the people in my country where asked in the only major referendum ever held in our history, our answer was a loud and clear "no". The EU has zero democratic legitimacy.