You shared an article about a cryptocurrency exchange?

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, etc.

There are direct elections for the parliament. Those "indirect appointees" are the heads of government of each state, it's as direct as it could possibly get.

And the "unelected bureaucrats" are just... bureaucrats. That's how governments are run the world over, even in places like Switzerland.

Or does your country vote regularly for the Director of Rail Transportation in your Ministry of Transportation? Or the Director of Lower Education in your Ministry of Education?

If your country holds referendums for that, your country is, sorry to inform you, bats**t crazy.

Let's please stop spreading anti EU propaganda and adress real concerns. For example the EU needs a full blown border protection agency and external EU border protection should be a 100% EU matter, not a member state matter. The EU should have a unified digital market. Etc.

Because for some shitty reason the EU is set up so only a consortium of governments can propose laws, then an elected parliament only says yes or no but can't propose its own laws.

Most are constitutional monarchies in which the monarch is a head of state with no or very limited political power.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchies_in_Europe

Give me the name of any country - and I'll tell you why it is not really a democracy.

There's so many actual reasons to complain about lack of democracy at the EU level; constitutional monarchies are certainly not one of them.

Why the downvotes? A democratic country should not have kings and queens, regardless of whether they have real power or not. Why should a person be so special in a democracy just because they have the right ancestors?

> It seems clearly better, as a user, to use an uncensored, un-backdoored service based in a foreign country

This point of view I could have understood 20 years ago, but Snowden revelations happened in 2013. Before that, US social media have always been censored according to US social norms.

Uncensored, un-backdoored services from a foreign country have never existed.

As for sovereignty, considering the current US admin as well as US tech barons have been pushing their horses in several EU elections, it's pretty obvious that services from a foreign country with such policies are an issue.

This dilemma might exist if Ecosia was thoroughly censored and corrupted to the point it was completely unfit for purpose, but it isn't, so for now it seems more like a hypothetical concern than a real one.

What is a real concern, however, is the American government influencing world events in ways that materially harms people outside of America. That government retains its power through the ongoing global economic dominance of American companies. Ordinary people can't do much to directly affect global affairs, but they can at least choose where to spend their money, so why wouldn't they choose to spend their money with companies who aren't propping up foreign governments that harm them?

Kagi user here, but one could argue that there is no such thing as un-backdoored service when the US government can knock at Google's door (kagi uses GCP) and ask the data, with little to no accountability or due process.

So I agree with you, but the premises are quite restrictive.

The European Parliament elects the president of the European Commission, and has to approve the commissioners of the European Commission. The European Council, who proposes the president and appoints the commissioners, is a representation of the governments of the member states, which are democratically elected as well. By electing their governments and the European Parliament, the European citizens ultimately determine who controls the European Commission, as a form of representative democracy.

> hardly anyone I know voted in the EU elections, and equally they weren't covered by the media. I believe there was so little interest in the EU elections

The choice about not voting is easily a sign of democracy, than a sign of no democracy. An autocratic system would either prevent people from voting or arrange votes leading to high support.

However there is indeed a problem:

For one the parliament is weak. It has no right if initiative and no right of budget. These rights are with the elected governments of the member states, who control the commission and firm the council. However even those are (if we ignore Hungary and that complexity) democratically elected and can face votes of confidence over their actions (based on national law)

The other big issue are the topics the EU deals with. Those are mostly complex trade related things, where not being an expert or having special interest in a segment hardly interest the people. The "interesting" topics like taxation, health care, education, social benefits, inner security, ... are within national politics. And even topics where EU powers overlap are discussed from national perspective. Which directly leads to the third issue.

EU is multinational and multilingual thing. A commissioner or MEP can give a fabulous speech, but most people only hear a badly dubbed version, partially even with being double translated (first from, say, Bulgarian to German, then from German to Portuguese) which makes it really hard to debate.

Now saying "it's complicated" hiding eyes and turning around is an option, but even Germany itself is too weak to play in the international field against US (especially with the current political situation) or China. If they can't find a common stand, they will not behold against t the big countries. For a few small counties aside, like Switzerland and UK there is some room to benefit from the big neighbor but be special, but Europe falling apart weakens all.

Which is the final point: The EU is the best structure we had in a few millenia where we didn't have all those different countries fighting and going to war, but we're we have defined ways to negotiate, vote and execute decisions. There is lots of room to improve, with different priorities by everybody, but better than other things we had.

The USA already banned The Hague (the metonymous court for international war crimes, not the city) from using Microsoft products. They did this because they knew they and their allies committed war crimes and don't want to be subject to the court, so they decided to impede its functioning as much as they can. This actually happened and is still happening right now.

I suspect this reply may be for someone else? I read what I said, I read this and it doesn't make sense to me because I didn't say anything would happen.

Ukraine has been invaded. We wish to prevent the Russians from being able to seize more of it and to restore Ukrainian control of those parts already seized.

Furthermore, the US has made military threats against Denmark. Azerbaijan has recently driven out 100,000+ Armenians from Nagorno-Karabach by starvation and artillery bombardment. Georgia has been invaded by Russia in 2008, and now a pro-Russian faction has possibly seized power.

Furthermore, we have a military threat from Turkey, which occupies territory of Cyprus and has recently converted churches on Cyprus into mosques and discussed plans for similar things with Armenian cultural monuments in eastern Anatolia.

A clean solution to these problems requires an increase in military capability.

> It most certainly is not the best game in town (of democracies).

Where are you claiming is better then?

The problems you point to are real and concerning. I'm still very glad to have an alternative to the US and China.

We are getting fucked by USA because we do not feel strong enough without them.

Everybody is blaming Ursula for the deal with Trump, like it was her decision. The individual countries politicians made the call, she is just a convenient scape goat (Probably precisely why her position was created for, to push things politicians know will be unpopular). Politicians (leaders of EU states) have and do have all the power to give her the marching orders.

We are getting fuck on a lot of things because we feel the need to rely on USA. With better/bigger militaries ourselves, USA will have les leverage.

Maybe Europe is not for you then, as they prioritize less gun deaths versus easy access to them (in your example).

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rates-from-firea...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/26/world/us-gun-culture-world-co...