I love that argument now parroted all over the Internet. Love it because what these people actually eman is they want an elected president, which would legitimize EU even more, hopefully with its own constitution.

▲

freehorse 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not necessarily. One can eg want more power to the actually elected part of the EU structure and less power to the commission. Imo electing or not a president does not necessarily help with democracy, as the US example shows. And in europe most countries do not have a strong presidential system, except France and 2-3 others. So I doubt having "strong elected president" is what people actually have in mind for the EU.

People bring this up they may consider EU to be historically a centralized power structure. Whether it can practically be actually democratized or not is a matter of debate. One can bring up the democratic deficit of EU without harbouring actual thoughts or hopes that it can be fixed.

	▲	eclark183 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[flagged]

▲

gizajob 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That would be the next step but they seem to be getting on fine with an unelected president.

▲

bawolff 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

EU already has a constitution (?)

▲

mattashii 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nope, it doesn't. It's current legal basis is a series of treaties, the attempt to create a constitution failed when in 2005 the various countries' local referenda on supporting an EU constitution failed to garner the required support. FRA' referendum failed 45-55, and NLD's consultative referendum on June 1 also gave a solid "no" (38.5% yes vs 61.5% no).

	▲	bawolff an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> It's current legal basis is a series of treaties But that meets the normal definition of a constitution. Just because the document isn't named the "constitution" doesn't make it any less of one. Most countries have constitutions that look like EU's legal basis. America style constitutions are less common. The later attempt to consolidate the constitution failing, doesn't make the previous legal basis any less of a constitution.

▲

cromka 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As others said. Constitution and an elected president would pave way into a common military.

▲

freehorse 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, good to make it clear that militarization of europe is what is actually debated, not democracy.

	▲	cromka 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Who said that?