There is nothing democratic about the process. It's all unelected politicians ruling for you

There is the Parliament's legislative train website [1]. However, it only tracks actual legislative steps, not the intra-Council negotiations, so the proposal's page appears to be have been largely inactive since 2024 [2].

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/

[2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-a-new...

We clearly live in different worlds.

I wouldn't be so sure of that assertion regarding attention span. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance granted, it's about opinion rather than capability but the same bias would explain such a reflexive judgment, and such a judgment will have negative consequences if it is false. (Consensus can be shaped, as can the perception of consensus be.)

That could still be democratic in principle if it weren’t for lobbyists

If legislative processes are so drawn out and complex that no more than a handful of ordinary citizens could keep track of them, the advantage that paid lobbyists have over the public is enormous

Is the process democratic if citizen's opinions are irrelevant?

No matter who's in charge, no matter the election results, no matter the protests - the same style of legislation is pushed.

and once something's in it is almost impossible to remove.

> The attention span of the general public _shouldn't_ matter. That's why we elect politicians.

It would work if we could elect politicians who were both competent and trustworthy.

Of course that would require successfully electing people who are competent about a broad range of issues, able to see through well funded and clever lobbying, unblinded by ideology, and able to resist pressure.

My problem is that i as a citizen can vote for my heads of state, but if other parts of EU decided something my vote is null and void, EVEN if majority of EU citizens are against such issue.

Imagine is those issues were campaign promises and part of internal(country's) elections - they aren't in reality but we can set that aside for now. as it was extremely well said by sibling post.

My country is 80% against 20% in favor(in practice it is even more skewed towards 'no' for chat control!), other EU countries are 51% for, 49% against.

Yet such 'vote' by heads of state counts whole countries in,if you were to count individual votes majority of EU citizens would be against it.

This allows you to pass undesirable or extremely contentious legislation, that would most likely prevent you from being elected in the future in your local elections but you can easily shift the blame too!

This is as far form democracy as possible, it is pure bureaucracy that serves it's own goals.

The culprit is correct. If the EU exists for political laundering, then it is the organisation which is harmful to the people's interests. Nobody voted for any of these heads of states on a platform of enacting Chat Control. That was not on the ballot or the platform of any party in any individual EU country. If it was, they would not have voted for it. If an individual party tried to initiate a chat control bill in its own country, it would surely face a massive reckoning at the next election[1]. Therefore, an individual party would likely not undertake to enact chat control. It is the existence of the EU which is enabling politicians to force undesirable legislation on their populace. In that environment, it is entirely correct to call the EU an un-democratic process. If it exists to pass legislation nobody would vote for and take the blame, then it will in fact be rightfully at blame and provide a strong motivation for people to exit the EU.

[1] In fact, we have helpfully seen this play out with our friendly early exiter. The remarkably self-destructive Labour party has passed their own absolute nonsense "online safety" bill, and are likely to be utterly destroyed in the next election with repealing the bill being part of the platform of the party that is polling at ~twice the share of the next largest party. With the EU providing blame-as-a-service, though, it is unlikely that anybody will be able to repeal Chat Control once rammed through, without exiting the EU entirely.

Identical in every respect other than those with the power to initiate legislation are completely immune to voter displeasure. The Commission have no direct link to the electorate and the your country's (sorry, “state”) Council representatives can hide behind collective consensus.

Why do people get so defensive about obviously flawed processes? This reply reads like a 4chan comment written by a frustrated teenager

"The plans for scanning your chats were on display for fifty Earth years at the local planning department in Alpha Centauri"?

Nobody's attention span is infinite. I don't doubt I could understand all details of the EU legislative process and keep track of what sort of terrible proposals are underway if I put in the time, but I have a day job, hobbies that are frankly more interesting, and enough national legislation to keep track of.

If you then also say that the outcome is still my responsibility as a voter, then it seems like the logical solution is that I should vote for whatever leave/obstruct-the-EU option is on the menu. I don't understand why I am obliged to surrender either a large and ever-growing slice of my attention or my one-over-400something-million share of sovereignty.

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