Hacker News Reader

Comment by 2RTZZSro | Hacker News Reader

My knee jerk reaction is that this is a great move. Save the bees! Regardless of whether this is a good or bad move: Who voted for this initiative? The EU is a dictatorship of unelected bureaucrats. Who was the person that said: "Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation." What is the significance of this statement? What was its context? watch?v=KN27x27LuDs

View on HN

>dictatorship of unelected beaurocrats

Ugh. MEPs are elected directly by citizens in popular elections, the European Council is composed of heads of member states, the Council of the EU is composed of specialized government officials of member states, commissioners of the Comission are appointed by the member states. How is this dictatorship, how is it unelected?

As the article says, todays vote on it was between representatives of the member state governments, who clearly have been given their voting mandate from their respective elected government. Which is how the majority of EU law is created: The EC proposes, and member state representatives and/or MEPs vote on it.

Very interesting thank you for chiming in

I think you need to stop reading tabloids and watching junk TV opinions when trying to inform yourself about the rest the world.

Please refute any of my arguments

You don't have any. You have unfounded opinions which you yourself fail to back up.

Your "unelected bureaucrats" are elected by popular vote every 5 years in the elections for the European Parliament. The other "unelected bureaucrats" in the council are elected by the governments that were elected in each country's elections. That's a lot of electing for an "unelected" bunch of people. Please go back to your hole.

I am a very pro-EU member of the Union and I definitely think the EU is on a roll with regulation lately (e.g. timely arrival of GDPR, reduction is subsidies for less democratic members).

However I am one of those pro people who think it's good to be critical. The nature of democracy in the EU is a good question that needs to be resolved.

Only Ireland seems to have been consistent about asking the actual people for their thoughts of big changes being made in the EU.

It's even questionable if Junker was 'elected' indirectly by the elected governments and it's almost certain he would never have been directly elected by the people of the EU given what would have emerged about tax 'avoidance' in Luxembourg.

Without wanting to give support to the English tabloid media, I think those questioning the democratic nature of the EU have a valid argument and the downvoting of those doing so above surprises me.

Elected commissioners? They are appointed not elected and as we know, they alone can propose laws.

"The Commission has a virtual monopoly on the introduction of legislation into the legislative process, a power which gives the Commission considerable influence as an agenda setter for the EU as a whole. And while the Commission frequently introduces legislation at the behest of the Council or upon the suggestion of Parliament, what form any legislative proposals introduced take is up to the Commission. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_legislative_pro...

One of the 28 is the Commission President (currently Jean-Claude Juncker) proposed by the European Council[5] and elected by the European Parliament.[6] The Council of the "European Union then nominates the other 27 members of the Commission in agreement with the nominated President, and the 28 members as a single body are then subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament.[7] The current Commission is the Juncker Commission, which took office in late 2014."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission

Council represent individual governments and European Parliment is elected. Commision is also elected by above. This system ensures that power is distributed between executive and legislature. By extension of the democratically elected European Parliament, legislature sooner or later trickle down to individual countries.

Compare this to the US with total chaos. Where president did not win by popular vote. Elections are rigged by gerrymandering. Senat is pushing for a legislature that is ignored in half of the states. President is doing executive orders that are either illegal or overreach his competences. FBI is messing with elections by running the public show.

Maybe EU move slowly, but I like this process.

Would you care to point out any argument in your little tant, so that it can be refuted?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com