▲ | JFingleton 7 days ago | |||||||
When the UK was in the EU, 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 and it felt so far removed from the uk that I'm not sure it really counted as "democratic" (perhaps someone will correct me here?). I'm hoping voters in European countries feel differently, I suspect not though. | ||||||||
▲ | johannes1234321 7 days ago | parent [-] | |||||||
> 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. | ||||||||
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