Why are we ignoring the other side of the transaction? The side responsible for taking the money.
Giving bribes for lobbying is bad, but that would not be an issue if those found taking the bribes would be guillotined or hanged.
With an egalitarian government, corruption is a problem, its bad, its something we try to fight and there are mechanisms to do so. Having no government is just giving up and going straight to 100% corruption.
I am very pro regulation.
Still, kinda weird to complain about bureaucracy and regulations in this context cus its the only solution to these problems of egality and corruption which humanity has been struggling with ever since the dawn of civilisation.
Tho, It's kind of a solved problem too. We should all just try to be like Denmark, they at the top or near the top of practially every metric. Happiness, corruption index, Gini, Quality of life, healthcare, education, carbon. They have a massive powerful bureaucracy, lots of strong regulation, extremely high taxes, low corruption.
The solution to any eco-geo-political issue is just "be more like Denmark". Once everyone gets to that level we can think about further improvement.
Wait, but doesn't Denmark have the strictest immigration policies in the entire EU?
> they at the top or near the top of practially every metric. Happiness, corruption index, Gini, Quality of life, healthcare, education, carbon.
I don't understand. Are you suggesting deporting all migrants to improve the statistics to Denmark's level? But that's impossible in our legal system. We've been actively importing culturally incompatible foreigners for decades now, and many already have citizenship. You can't just strip people of their citizenship in an attempt to improve the statistics.
They’re fighting a battle against the real problem which is the paid up influence campaigns that give them problems to defend. Start at the press, the social media companies and the think tanks.
This last sentence immediately made me think of Epstein’s island and the “ultimate taboo” they were engaging in there.
Nothing unites the scum stronger than a guaranteed scorching pan in hell for all of them.
I might not be corruption, it might be worse.
I was told by Brussels insiders a few decades ago the Commission people are not really corruptible. They are guaranteed a very comfortable life and the sanctions are harsh. That might have change, I don't know.
What I was explained is the system is designed for lobbying. The main input is by the lobbies, not the people.
Most of us assume the EU is designed like the US system or individual countries like Germany, Italy or France but it is not. The power of the Parliament is very limited, but we see here that little power has become too much of an inconvenience for the people in power.
For anyone daring to look into the boring design of that thing will come to the conclusion it is absolutely not democratic.
This Democracy does not equal "what people want". It's a system designed to make people feel like they have the power for change. Knowing that, many people just vote to stop the far-right party from gaining power.
The EU similarly is working as designed. It's a symbiosis between State and Capital and in hard times it has to regulate peoples rights in order to maintain stability. Or in this case open the door to stop anti-state/EU propaganda.
I'm not against Democracy, just want to lay out it's limitations as it is applied.
Not really - all of these have been happening in the past 5-6 years, since the surprisingly London-linked von Leyen and her cadres somehow ended up at the helm.
So it's not a surprise that whatever law the UK passes has been carried over to the Eu recently - the social media ban, digital ids, chat control and everything.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate
- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-secret-gr...
Ironically, those are two separate cases of one high-profile EU politician (in fact, the very head of the same parliament that pushes for mass scanning of private messages) BOTH involving secret text messages that the mentioned politician refuses to reveal.
By WHO?! They are THE (unelected) ruling elite. Who's gonna prosecute them?
The commissioners are picked by the heads of state (elected) and the EU parliament (also elected).
This does not absolve them from wrongdoing, but you should understand where your complaints should be directed at.
After how many layers does the democratic part get watered down and is just members of the elite picking other elites?
Role | Chosen by | Direct citizen vote?
-----------------------------+------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------
Commission President | European Council proposes, European Parliament elects| No (indirect via EP)
European Council President | European Council (27 heads of state) | No
European Parliament President| MEPs elect from among themselves | No (indirect via EP)
ECB President | European Council, after consulting Parliament | NoBy your own ridiculous standards, I don't live in a democracy. I fact, any paliamentarism would not be democratic based on that.
That's kind of whataboutism. If that works for your country and the people are happy with the arrangement and the results of this system, I don't see an issue.
>By your own ridiculous standards
I don't think direct accountability to the citizens is a ridiculous concept. If you're unhappy with a MEP, your prime minister, you can vote them out or protest till they quit. But the head of the EC, Ursula, is impossible to dethrone by the people via democratic vote or protest. You're stuck taking up the ass from someone you never voted for and don't support.
The Commission can be dismissed by the Parliament, with a majority of its members and 2/3 of votes cast
When you vote in your elections, you almost certainly know who's going to lead the country.
Not so with the EU: look up Spitzenkandidat method and the deviations from it, including von der Leyen in 2019 being parachuted into her post not based on any vote.
My tone is appropriate.
Unrelated to this chat, but I wonder what your political leaning is, just to understand where this aggressive defense of the EU is coming from. I assume you're not left or right, not radical in any direction. Would you describe yourself as moderate/centrist/Starmer's Labour/Macronite?
Nope, they are in this very thread, complaining about "unelected" officials.
Initially I dismissed this as a product of ignorance, but they keep repeating the same bullshit after being corrected. It is clearly bad faith.
> You seem to be assuming a whole lot of dark motives or unsavoury opinions in reaction to people simply saying the EU is not perfect.
That is not the argument. The EU is far from perfect, and if that's the discussion, I wouls have a lot of things to say about it.
> but I wonder what your political leaning is, just to understand where this aggressive defense of the EU is coming from.
I tend to see myself as left of center, although I did drift further to the left over time.
I am not from the UK to describe myself in in the UK political spectrum, although looking from the outside I have the impression Labour is largely ineffective and Starmer is (was?) running the government pretty much as the tories would have.
I am also not French. My understanding is that for French standards Macron is center-right?
Not sure if this answered your question.
The council is more problematic, since a blocking majority might only represent 25% of the population (half of the EU member governments, each elected by majority vote), but in this case they voted in favor, so it's as if they didn't exist and the decision lies with parliament, whose composition is determined by proportional representation. Excellent!
The interesting thing here is that the EU is accused of being undemocratic not because special interests killed a law with wide support among the populace, but because all the different bodies might actually agree and pass a law that privacy activists don't like. Legislation by agreement of multiple cross-cutting majorities must clearly be undemocratic!
Their opposition is ideological, democracy is just an excuse because their true views would be too unsavory to say out loud.
The UK pm and the POTUS are both ultimately accountable through elections. In the UK, a general election can change the government. In the US, people vote specifically for presidential electors, even if it’s through the Electoral College.
The EU commission is different. People don’t vote for commissioners or the president, and they can’t vote them out in the same direct way.
If anything, the EU is curtailing the undemocratic tendencies of member states.
the US president is appointed by politicians who are elected, and the only accountability mechanism for president is impeachment, which is again, indirect via elected politicians.
It has never happened, but if there once would be enough faithless electors to swing the election (choosing a different president than what people voted for) it would be a huge scandal and it would be widely condemned as undemocratic.
There has been so far 5 elections where the electoral vote chose a different president than what the popular vote count would have chosen. But this is a different thing than what I was talking about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...
Many people are confused by the fact that only States can vote for President. The most a person's vote can do is provide input into their State's votes for President.
I am still to see as many people getting riled up about how those countries are not democratic.
Nobody really knows or cares who is going to be appointed to the commission since domestic issues always completely over shadow it.
Are you really trying to imply that voters don't know who the fuck their heads of government are?
I mean, this is a rhetorical question. I don't really expect people who keep repeating misinformation about EU to be arguing in good faith.
It's a bit like with replacing senators in the US with state governors (except actually worse since US is way more centralized and local and federal parties are much more aligned).
If voters actually voted for council representatives directly they could actually influence it in meaningful ways. Now e.g. in Germany a CDU voter won't suddenly switch to AFD or Greens just because they prefer their stance on Chat Control (or whatever else).
The fact that the head of state is on EU council sort of sucks, because when I vote on national elections people are looking at internal issues, and EU policy is more of an afterthought.
But that doesn't align with morons claiming that those are "unelected officials" or that the EU is somehow undemocratic.
From what I remember the head of the european commission was picked from a group of people that weren't even up for election after the official candidates that were paraded around during an EU wide election where dismissed.