> I sometimes wonder had Apple not been such an arse with its App Store and monopolistic rules. Would these regulations ever come up.
Nah these regulations were always coming. Everyone always likes to pick on Apple and the App Store, but quite frankly in the EU (where iPhones market share is only 24% compared to 49% in the US) Apple is small fries compared to companies like Facebook which basically owns 100% of social media.
Anyway you're right but it's like, how would any of this concretely improve competition? In my experience, the problem is that giant companies steal your stuff, whether it's your code or your users, and that even when you want to enforce something like that, they can afford better lawyers than you.
Like nobody here is working on social networks, cellphones or web browsers. I bet you interact with IP law almost every single day though, and a lot of truly disruptive things have termination conditions like, "And then a giant company sues you for IP violations and you go bankrupt, even if you're in the right."
Maybe this benefits giant European tech companies, but it certainly doesn't benefit competition.
Everythings relative. You've got to start somewhere.
> Anyway you're right but it's like, how would any of this concretely improve competition?
I don't think this is just about competition. There has to be a recognition that social networks etc are natural monopolies, it's very hard to have competition there. Regardless of HNs utopian view of open protocols and distributed and federated social networks, the reality is that it's just not gonna happen.
So a I feel a big part of these laws isn't about creating competition, it's about making sure that mega-corporations like Facebook can't amase more power than democratically elected governments. These law make it clear that if you get to big, the EU will step in and make sure you're operating in line with their ideals, not the other way around.
> And then a giant company sues you for IP violations and you go bankrupt
Is this an issue with the FAANG giants? My sense is initiating IP litigation is more the province of legacy tech companies like IBM and Oracle. (Who aren’t being targeted by these EU laws)
I’ve seen very little examples of Apple, Google, or Amazon initiating patent lawsuits. Especially against small players. If anything most of their lobbying and litigation seems to aim to weaken IP law. (E.g. Google v. Oracle)
They like the current IP law landscape almost solely because it's the monster they know rather than the monster they don't. Moving the needle to either of the extremes (more ip control vs less) would have some positives but a load of unknown negatives.
App stores charging 30% are a majority of the EU market and Apple is a large part of it. EU tend to regulate such price fixing schemes when they get large enough, see for example credit cards.
I dunno about the rest of Europe, but at least in Iceland, Facebook is _the_ social network for interacting with people you know (and WhatsApp is _the_ messaging service).
Sure, people use the others ones, but for instance all my communication with my landlord and socializing with coworkers goes through Facebook, not through any other platform. The rest are optional. Facebook isn't.
This is weird to me, the argument is not just that company X is a private platform so they should be able to do what they want it is that they're a private US platform and in the US they can do what they want because that's generally the law and social understanding of companies in the US. At least for me it was never that company X can do what they want globally.
That's silly they're subject to the laws of the jurisdiction under which they operate.
The EU is free to regulate them just like the US is free not to regulate them.
Corporations cannot do "what they want" in the US, they're subject to regulations and to anti-trust laws. The problem is that the government (both parties) has been very lax about anti-trust enforcement. So now we have companies that are virtual monopolies and oligopolies trying to remove whatever regulations still remain in the books.
Well duh. I stated as much in my last two lines. I swear people read like three words of other people's statements instead of the whole thing and then reply.
The argument that since they're a private platform they should be able to do what they want. I don't think it's ever been a blanket argument globally because the concept of a private entity is very different from nation to nation.
I am not sure anyone aside from a tiny minority of hardcore libertarians believes that "since they're a private platform they should be able to do what they want" is a valid argument.
Sure, I think I'd agree there but the OP phrased this like "Take that all you people who have been saying this" I was like that must be a fraction of a fraction of people who were.
EU have about much power to imprison you as Apple does, as in they can't unless they can convince the local police you have committed some crime. They lack power compared to US feds.
They’re still a collaborative governmental entity with governments enforcing its laws, so they pass muster as far as being a “State” goes, unless you want to go into specifics about the various treaties and how this is really a treaty organization and blah. In the looks, walks and quacks like a duck, with all the other ducks around treating it like a duck, it’s a bloody government with all the powers that entails, even if enforcement is a matter left to the member nations that do have all of the powers I just outlined. I actually did write recently in a HN comment outlining the difference between the EU and Feds, but in terms of power, the EU is closer to the US Federal Government than to Apple because it still has laws.
Apple is a private organization with a corporate charter, owned by shareholders, controlled by its Board of Directors and with the ability to engage in lawful business activity, with none of the powers that governments have. They don’t have jurisdiction, they have stores. They don’t make laws, they write policies. They don’t levy taxes, they trade. The fees of the App Store are a known quantity, and you can take them or leave them.
So in that light, does it still make sense to try to control Apple like a government entity or treat them like some kind of pseudo-government or rhetorically refer to their business practices using language we use to describe governments? Why do we demand so much more accountability from governments including supranational intergovernmental treaty organizations controlled by governments than we do from private shareholder owned and controlled organizations? Honestly think about it.
The police follow their local laws and not EU laws and EU laws aren't automatically adopted by countries. And so far local politicians often refuse to enact EU laws when they don't make sense, and there isn't much EU can do about it since the local politicians are more powerful than EU politicians, instead EU tend to make exceptions for those who refuse.
Lastly unlike US countries can still leave EU. If they make it illegal to leave then I'd worry, but until then the local government always comes first, since if EU pressures them too much they'd just leave.
The EU has a legislature, it passes laws, has borders, citizens and a monetary policy.
It has limited executive functions but it does have some. It even has courts.
You sure about that? I’m open to the idea, but I don’t see it. A sui generis government that doesn’t perfectly fit the mold of prior systems is still a government. Maybe a more apt description is a government of governments? Sell me on your take.
This is a bit off-topic, but personally, I believe it to be a matter of when rather than if.
For now, the EU does have indirect ways of enforcing EU-wide legislation, as individual member countries will implement EU directives and enforce them. Thus, laws written in Brussels could result in people getting arrested, even if it ended up being a Dutch or Polish police officer doing the actual arresting.
The EU does, however, tend to stick to things that result in economical sanctions and fines, rather than incarceration.
Apple, on the other hand, has no such legislative powers.
As long as countries can leave the EU there is no way it will become as top down governed as US is. If the EU feds started to be as heavy handed as the US feds then the union would break apart, and since it is legal to leave in EU unlike US it wouldn't become a civil war.
> "The difference is that Apple is not a government."
That means they are not an organization that is accountable to the public. That means they are an organization that cares more about profit and market share, than about human/civil rights.
You started by comparing Apple to a government. The difference is that the government represents you, while Apple represents their share holders.
Of course my local coffeeshop also represents their owner (no idea if they have share holders), so what's the difference with Apple? Size. I don't know what your local coffeeshop is like, but mine is not a trillion dollar company. Apple is. And Apple's products are used by millions of people all over the world. That means Apple wields a lot of power. They may not be able to lock you in prison, but they are able to block or restrict your usage of your electronic devices. They have a lot of power over other companies that want to provide services through those devices.
And without regulation, all of that power is unchecked; they wield that power for the profit of their shareholders, not for the public good. They have in the past harmed users and companies because Apple saw a way to make more money by monopolising certain functionality.
All businesses have owners, with equity as a proxy for who owns how much. A coffee shop might have one equity holder or it might have a dozen or it might be Starbucks with as many shareholders as they have. As far as the difference goes, it is the difference between an S-Corp or a C-Corp and each has their own tax advantages and disadvantages from a tax perspective.
Each has one thing in common though: if you don’t like their crap, you don’t buy it. If the coffee sucks or you can’t install the software you want, you buy something else. Apple’s power is over the products they sold and the services they continue to provide after the purchase. You can install any kind of software that you can get working, what Apple doesn’t do is promise any kind of support for getting every type of software to run on the products they sold, nor are they obligated to. Those are the terms, they are fairly well known, you can take that information with you into the marketplace and choose from what’s available or try to scrape something together that will do the same thing from parts. Might not be as nice as Apple’s stuff, but it will have as much capability as you put into it.
I seriously don’t get the siren song of regulation as it is sung here. I see value in some laws, I don’t see value in laws as a reaction to every move a corporation makes to try to bend them to the public’s will. Corporations aren’t people, but they represent the private interests, time and money of real people, but that concept seems so abstract to people that they can treat large organizations as public bodies with all the responsibilities of something that has much more power over their lives and many more people under their employ which can abuse that power when in reality, Apple has no more power over your life than your coffee shop, just whatever power you choose to give it.
> You started by comparing Apple to a government.
I know these threads can run long and it is easy to list the thread but here is what I originally responded to:
>> Another interesting tidbit is the answer to the common trope that 'private platform can act as they wish since they are private' :
> Now the EU is saying the same thing to Apple. It is their market, and they dictate the rules. Which is perhaps a taste of Apple's own medicine?
> I wonder what those people who keep saying it is Apple's platform they can do what ever they want had to say?
I didn’t like the mindset this commentary reflected, in particular the idea that the EU or any of its member nations “own their markets” the way Apple owns the App Store, because that is dangerously close to saying governments own people. Markets are reflective of the individual choices of people. You can own the NASDAQ, but you can’t own the people trading on the NASDAQ and you don’t own the companies listed on the NASDAQ merely by owning the NASDAQ, but you can set the criteria by which you list companies on the NASDAQ.
A nation can have jurisdiction over its internal market, businesses, a place where their laws are enforced, and don’t get me wrong, their laws, good or bad, are still their laws. I won’t dispute that, but having jurisdiction is not the same as ownership, and the market is some kind of central body or organization you can own, it’s all the people in a market who trade with all the other people in a market, whether that market is a dozen people or all the people in the world.
No problem - the local coffee shop is also subject to regulations and needs to pay tax, need to respect hard fought worker laws (at least in most countries) and needs to respect the law.
Now there are some new regulations for bigger entities. What's the problem?
Is the problem the license plates or the license plate readers?
This is not a strong argument for the merits of “size” of business in the context of lawmaking. This demonstrates the privacy defects of what is a law enforcement tool intended for vehicle identification.
Arbitrary? Size correlates directly to power, monetary power, platform power. If size was arbitrary and meritless then why there are regulations on antitrust that are basically based on size of market capture?
Let me put it differently, market share does not equal profit share does not equal revenue share does not equal total number of people employed by does not equal share of ownership in a particular store or platform. So what is the measure?
Apple owns 100% of the App Store, but they do not recognize 100% of the revenue from the App Store on their financials.
An arbitrary number of people like 45M EU citizens choosing to use your service or buy your products or shop in your stores? I don’t see the merits for this distinction.
That’s an interesting point, but I don’t think it’s a matter of trusting one type of organization more than another.
I think we (Americans) don’t trust either without cause, and there’s more corporations than governments so there’s more opportunities to find corporations, actually scratch that, businesses, big or small, that we trust. But by default, I think we trust both about as far as we can throw them and businesses we do trust, maybe only slightly so and in a largely transactional manner. The question is whether we are getting value for the money, not whether the businesses and owners are trustworthy.
The difference is that in the US we don’t trust the government to the point where even though that’s the one we have more control over, we do not choose to use it against bad corporate behavior for fear that the government will do it wrong. The EU sees that it can effectively regulate corporations so they use their government the way it was intended to.
Governments are self-executing power vehicles. Ascribing intent onto them isn’t particularly useful when a government has a mechanism for rewriting its reason foe existence through law.
That said:
> The EU sees that it can effectively regulate corporations so they use their government the way it was intended to.
What is the basis for your claims on their effectiveness?
I think he used "effective" as in: "they have the power to, they are able to/it fall in their domain", not as in "they did it perfectly without overhead"
I meant it as the EU has imposed regulations on big co and it hasn’t immediately ruined the EU. In the US we have this notion that if we impose even a tiny bit of common sense regulation that it will instantly ruin the economy and the country will fall apart as a result. Take minimum wage for example. Loads of economic research shows that federally mandated minimum of $15/hour would be good for the economy. Yet fully half the voters will scream bloody burger at that idea labeling it as radical. They would rather continue the government supplement the incomes of Walmart workers than having Walmart pay a fair wage because what if this hurts Walmart too much?
I was hoping for some more concrete examples of what the EU has done right, but I’ll address the minimum wage.
> Take minimum wage for example. Loads of economic research shows that federally mandated minimum of $15/hour would be good for the economy.
In what ways has it been shown it would be good for the economy?
How does it address the fact that the minimum wage is actually zero and unemployed is the real minimum wage? How does it help small retail stores that need a minimum number of bodies behind the counter when the store is open in order to stay in business?
I live in a place that did implement $15/hour minimum wage, and ultimately what is been slowly doing is making some businesses unviable. Even before the pandemic forced its closure, one of my favorite shops, one I used to work at in fact when I was younger and I’ve kept in touch since, was slowly going out of business because the owner needed two bodies behind the counter to ensure timely service and his costs were greater than >$30/hour once you factored in mandatory insurance costs and taxes in addition to the usual operational overhead of just being open 16 hours in the first place. What was once a perfectly viable business was already dying just from the extra labor costs alone, with the owner who had been in the business for over 30 years putting in longer hours and making less money just because he wanted to keep his crew employed. He also had to raise prices every single year to keep up with the additional costs. He kept it going, but by the end he was putting in more money than he was taking out, and the pandemic forced its closure when his insurance company wouldn’t pay out for the spoiled product.
The new owner changed business models, rather than freshly made on-site lunch, you get whatever was pre-made at her other business, no customizations, and the product and experience are completely different. The business under the original owner and the business under the new owner share a name, but they are essentially entirely different businesses.
And you know what? That’s business. That’s how things go sometimes, but could he have remained in business if his labor costs weren’t so high? I think he wanted to, and it’s not like he never issued raises. Each generation of staff typically had one or two people who were earning a lot more than the rest of the crew, greater than what the minimum wage eventually became even, because the earned it by making him more money.
The entire economy isn’t Walmart and Apple Stores, but the more costs you impose on businesses and the higher you raise the floor, the sooner it will be. It doesn’t matter if everyone ought to be able to afford 4oz of ice cream at $5, if fewer people are willing to pay for it at that price to cover the additional labor costs.
Ugh. Ok. I don’t have time to understand this for you, but think about it this way: if a Walmart employee makes $7/hour but where he lives he needs to make $15/hour to not fall below the poverty line, you know who pays the extra $8/hour? The government. With all of its overhead of managing a social safety net program. Do you want the government to tax you so that Walmart can underpay by $8/hour? In what way does it benefit you to be taxed for that money? And remember that Walmart has plenty of money from their current prices already to pay $15/hour. Their prices need not go up to pay a living wage to their employees. So really if you are for small government, you are for raising the minimum wage and letting the market sort itself out rather than running social programs for those whose employers fail to pay them.
Small businesses will have to raise prices. But owning wage slaves isn’t justification enough for someone to run a small business.
Lastly, why this is good for the economy: you are free to do your own research but here is why this works. Give a billionaire an extra $1000/month and he will put it into his offshore account and never think about it again, let alone spend it. Give a poor person $1000/month and he will instantly put it back into the economy. This is why trickle down economy doesn’t work but stimulus programs do. If it was the other way around all the US government would have to do is hand over a few billion dollars to like five rich guys instead of negotiating stimulus deals every time there is a crisis. If you think that every time the working class is suffering the best thing to do is to prop up the rich then I, again, cannot understand for you why that’s wrong.
This right here is the difference. In the US we treat the government just like every other corporation. We expect it to screw us over and that we have no control over it and it is a self fulfilling prophecy. Between that and identity politics becoming the main issue voters vote on and we have a recipe for the government becoming self-executing power vehicles just like Walmart, Amazon, Facebook, etc. There is no by the people, for the people currently.
Re. effectiveness, see below. The EU has imposed a large number of regulations, some quite severe like the GDPR, and yet it didn’t fall apart. Not saying the GDPR is good as implemented or anything, just that despite its flaws it didn’t kill the economy or the EU, the perennial fear of right wing fear mongers.
> Between that and identity politics becoming the main issue voters vote on and we have a recipe for the government becoming self-executing power vehicles just like Walmart, Amazon, Facebook, etc. There is no by the people, for the people currently.
I think you’re mixing cause and effect here. The government is a vehicle of power because it has power vested in it and it represents people who wield that power.
Voting is one such power, we vote on laws, sheriffs, representatives at many levels, senators, district attorneys, even for some damned foolish reason, judges. Not just POTUS. Whatever government we have at any point in time is pretty much the government we deserve because we put it there with our choices.
It’s naïve to think power will not be exploited though, and because the difference between the lawful powers of a government and the lawful powers of a private company are so vast and disparate, we’re a lot more concerned with curbing government power.
Any elected official is a person, not a mindless automaton, and people have interests which they can and do put above the public good almost all the time. It’s the exception when they do not, not the rule, even when it is only their own family. If an elected official or a bureaucrat employed by them can use the knowledge and experience and power they have to save a member of their own family or protect them, they bloody will. Similarly many will find ways to profit from their positions, I don’t know why we expect they won’t.
But hey, maybe all the elected officials and bureaucrats of the EU and it’s member nations are actually Angels sent down from Heaven to show the world how it is done. Great if that’s the case, but I wouldn’t put money on that.
Even when elected officials are not involved, people vote for bad laws all the time. California is one such place, San Francisco is another. We have the power to hang ourselves here, and we exercise that right regularly. It gets even worse because elected officials have realized they can punt anything remotely controversial onto the ballot box rather than exercise discretion and judgement in their own decision making, because doing so would make them accountable to their constituents.
Trust me, the problem is not being ruled by 51% of the people, but being ruled by < 1%, which is the case with American oligarchy (or at least their final goal).
Could you please tell me more about this "oligarchy"? From my contact with the rich it seems like they want to give me lots of money so I could try some of my cool projects, not rule me - they want profit, not costs.
And trust me, being ruled by the 1% would give you way better chances than you got with the 51%. The 1% took money and gave us sci-fi technologies, the 51% took absurdly more money and gave us many problems.
Who's your coronavirus counter-strike leader - Gates or Trump?
The rich don't want to eat you. They don't care about you. They want profit, just like you. They will spend a lot of it on pleasure, just like you. Nobody makes profit in the world you're talking about, it grinds to halt, without pleasure (and freedom is connected with that) there is no point in working.
You can also avoid the 1%. They don't care, and if you're saying there are no other options then you didn't look. Actually I recommend to try - you'll find out that small and middle businesses exist, and they need your support now.
Well, that's one kind of 1%. Then there's the other kind that has enough money and uses it to amass power in domains outside of their core business. Think Koch brothers, George Soros, Rupert Murdoch. Think large donors and Super-PACs. Think politicians that, despite financial security, wield their power not for the masses but for the handful of people that will finance their next campaign instead. This is all enabled by money but going well past pure profit.
Even where only profit is concerned, there are downsides to concentrating the power in the 1%. Tax laws getting optimized for growth of capital over redistribution, loopholes large enough to allow for intergenerational dynasties over equal opportunity, copyright getting extended to a hundred years with free-use exceptions getting killed left and right.
I see your point and the likes of Gates (post-Microsoft) would make a positive difference. On the other hand, I'd prefer Joe Biden over Peter Thiel. It's very much a case-by-case kind of thing.
Please do not generalise the "we". The yellow vests definitely did not trust their government and took it to the streets. If one doesn't trust a corporation they should not work for/with them.
In every generalisation, you're obviously going to miss some nuance.
French people have a long history of revolting against the political establishment, dating back to at least the French revolution, that makes them somewhat different than, say, Germany, where I live. So this is a fair point.
On the other hand, I would still think that throughout most of French history, and also now with the yellow vests, people rarely went to the streets to protest for "less regulation", and especially not in order to advocate for the interests of big corporations over those of the state. Yes, there was (is?) a French brand of anarchism, but that was always more of a "property is theft" kind of anarchism, and not a US-style libertarian anarcho-capitalism.
So, I think what I rather meant to say is the following:
Most people in Europe trust the idea of a powerful government (even if they violently disagree with its current incarnation) much more than the idea of equally powerful private corporations.
France is already over regulated. The yellow vests went to the streets to protest against reforms taxing fuel to somehow offset for climate change, then grew into an anti establishment movement.
Yes, it's true, we'd rather have a big government that runs the show than big corps (from overseas).
In fact Facebook threatened to leave the EU over a ban of sharing data with the US. I shall toast to the EU if this ever happens.
The EU didn't create its citizens (unlike Apple which created its products); saying that the EU 'owns' their market is quite a big step in assuming control over the lives of residents.
> quite a big step in assuming control over the lives of residents.
Have you heard of laws and governments before? This is exactly what they do, it’s also why democracy is such a big thing.
If you’re gonna give that much power to an organisation, you want to make sure you can change it if start going off the rails.
> The EU didn't create its citizens (unlike Apple which created its products);
It might not have “created” it’s citizens. But it certainly created and maintains the environment that make those citizens wealthy and capable of being a market for Apple.
I was just answering the parent's question: "I wonder what those people who keep saying it is Apple's platform they can do what ever they want had to say?"
They're nice views, I entertain myself that way sometimes, too.
But they all fall apart at the first meeting with the police, especially when you're the suspect. We're powerless.
And that's "just" the police, the military is the actual force of a government and they're absolutely not keen on listening to your philosophies. It's an interesting world, for sure.
No, at least not in the semi-democracy systems that are in use today. In most western countries the citizens are allowed to vote on a portion of the people that create and run the government. It varies between countries but even in those nearest a system that resembles democracy the citizens don't have much power over what happens or who most of the people running the system are.
Voters of France and Netherlands strongly rejected the treaty upon which the EU derives is legitimacy. Referendums were cancelled elsewhere.
Ursula von der Leyen did not receive any votes, she wasn't even part of the process, she was an unknown German figure until after the election, when she was plucked from obscurity by actors acting in total opacity, behind closed doors: "Here is your New Leader".
I respect much of the commercial facility of the EU, but it's severely lacking in democracy.
And while I think a lot of the intentions of the current system are reasonable, a lot of it is not ... and I'm super concerned that totally unelected and unaccountable elite are just going to be smashing their big hands into the economy, with the simplistic populist notions of 'American Economic Imperialism' and a kind of anti-American jealousy just under the surface.
It'd be nice to see much more thoughtfulness here, but more importantly, mechanisms to improve European competitiveness.
The EU democratic structure is complex, that for sure. But it's hardly undemocratic.
The EU has always struggled to explain how it works, why it's structure works the way it does. But all the leaders in the EU are elected, just not always via direct elections. A process that actually isn't that unusual in the world.
The US is actually a bit of an outlier, because they have direct elections for almost every position in government, with some slightly mixed results. The EU it's common for countries to select and organise their executive bodies via in-direct elections. For example in the UK our prime minister isn't directly elected, the general public didn't "choose" Boris Johnson. Instead the conservative party did, via its own methodology which it can change any time it does.
The current byzantine system exists out of a need to somehow balance the power of the EU as a federal entity, against the sovereignty of the individual nations. With irony come from the fact that the "unelected" leader only exist because it give more power to leaders of the member states, and takes it away from the EU as an organisation independent of its member states and their elected governments.
The EU democratic structure is complex, that for sure. But it's hardly undemocratic.
I don't really want to start a rehash of the entire Brexit debate we had in the UK, but the EU does have a serious democratic deficit.
Ask yourself this simple question: Can a citizen who is governed by the EU meaningfully influence who is doing that governing? In particular, can a large group of citizens affect who holds power within the EU and vote out those individuals they don't want, so any individual office holder has some degree of personal accountability to the electorate?
It would take quite a leap to argue that the European Commission, which is where most of the real power still lies in practice, would meet any of those standards.
It is debatable whether even the European Parliament does, though it is at least more directly affected by the public vote.
For example in the UK our prime minister isn't directly elected, the general public didn't "choose" Boris Johnson. Instead the conservative party did, via its own methodology which it can change any time it does.
Our arrangement here in the UK suffers from a similar problem of failing to faithfully represent the will of the electorate. FPTP is a deeply flawed voting system on purely mathematical grounds, and then the mechanics through which the PM and by extension the government come to power once MPs have been elected can be even more distorted.
If you don't think it matters that many of our population have little influence over who occupies Number 10, I would respectfully remind you that one of the first things each new PM does is handwrite four letters that could literally cause the end of the world as we know it.
> Can a citizen who is governed by the EU meaningfully influence who is doing that governing? In particular, can a large group of citizens affect who holds power within the EU and vote out those individuals they don't want, so any individual office holder has some degree of personal accountability to the electorate?
Erm yes. A large group of citizen can apply pressure to its local government to push for change in the EU, they can also to the same via MEP elections. You just need to remember that a "large group" need to be very large to be considered important relative to the EU 450 million citizens. The UK's total population only makes up 14% of the total EU population, what gives us the right to dictate terms over the remaining 86%?
National governments pick the members of the European Commision, so if you're not happy with your European Commission representative, take it up with your national government. As for the member picked by other governments, well you wouldn't expect to have power over an MP that doesn't represent you.
> It is debatable whether even the European Parliament does
The European Parliament obviously does. The only reason why the UK keeps getting short changed by the European Parliament is because we keep electing idiots into power. Most because our national government like to pretend MEPs don't exist, thus doesn't educate people on the importance of MEP elections, then acts surprised when the European Parliament doesn't represent the UK population.
> If you don't think it matters that many of our population have little influence over who occupies Number 10
I think it does matter, I think it matter quite a bit. But I'm not convinced that the general public is the best body to make that choice directly. The whole point of have a representatives is that they have the time and resources to educate themselves on the minutiae of state, and make better decisions than the general public. Not because they're smarter or better, but because they're better informed.
My view on the EU debate in the UK has always boiled down to the fact the UK public has simply not bothered to engage with the democratic systems in the EU, so it's not a surprise that those systems don't represent us. The fix here was always for the UK to actually participate in the EU, not just strope, but that would require the UK national government to stop using the EU as it scapegoat for its own domestic failures. At least with Brexit the UK government won't be able to blame the EU for everything anymore, and we might actually get some competent leaders with a real vision for the UK.
The UK public has been told very little about the EU. There's very little local European news in the British media, and what does appear is often jokey and condescending or slanted in a negative.
A snowstorm in the US will get significant coverage, but an equivalent major weather event in France and Germany won't.
The reality is the British Establishment simply doesn't understand Europe as a social and political project. It has no clue what consensus building, social responsibility, and political integration are for, and simply sees the EU - at least, saw the EU - as an exploitable if rather shifty trading partner.
Now the EU is a competitor, the US has limited interest in the UK, the former commonwealth countries have been looking elsewhere, and the UK's rather minimal level of independent leverage is about to become very obvious.
"Erm yes. A large group of citizen can apply pressure to its local government to push for change in the EU, they can also to the same via MEP elections. "
This is obviously false, it has never happened in the history of the EU - just the opposite - citizens literally voted overwhelmingly against major treaties, and they were passed anyhow.
Explain to us right now how major nations voted against the Treaty of Lisbon, and it was enacted anyhow?
"It is debatable whether even the European Parliament does
The European Parliament obviously does. "
It obviously doe not, the evidence is clear: MEPs don't even have the right to introduce legislation, they don't chose or censure their leaders, they have almost no power at all.
"thus doesn't educate people on the importance of MEP elections, then acts surprised when the European Parliament doesn't represent the UK population."
Again, completely baseless claims. The level of awareness of MEP involvement is similarly low in other countries.
"My view on the EU debate in the UK has always boiled down to the fact the UK public has simply not bothered to engage with the democratic systems in the EU"
No - there is no meaningful way for individual citizens or groups to engage with on the EU level, by reason of scale and design, it was never meant to be that way.
Ask yourself the question:
+ Why can MEPs not introduce legislation?
+ Why can MEPs not meaningfully censure leaders?
+ Why can MEPs, the only elected officials, not chose the leadership cadre?
+ Why is election turnout a paltry 45%
Those were concrete, well designed choices, and the lack of democracy embodied in those choices was purposeful.
The EU was specifically designed with a democracy deficit to keep the plebes and populism at bay.
Those who defend the system are either ignorant of the reality of it, like Chinese commoners defending their President Xi on the basis of 'security and prosperity' - or they know the Machiavellian roots of the decisions and are just unwilling to admit it.
Pro EU people are so often unwilling to engage in any way in the issue, they're like Trumpers or the more hardcore patriotic America types who see no wrong or nuance in American foreign policy example.
These are the usual arguments in defence of the EU's democratic credentials. The fundamental problem I have with them is that they don't actually meet the simple, transparent standards I set out for meaningful democratic representation.
National governments pick the members of the European Commision, so if you're not happy with your European Commission representative, take it up with your national government.
How, specifically, should someone do that in practice? Does someone cast an anonymous vote to indicate their preference? Will some robust system then make an objective determination of the outcome based on the popular vote? This is how the people customarily determine their representatives in a representative democracy.
In reality, the number of levels of indirection between you or me as ordinary people who vote in elections and Ursula von der Leyen as the most powerful person in the EU government removes any meaningful requirement for her to either achieve a popular mandate before taking office or accept any meaningful personal accountability for her performance while in office.
And more generally, European Commissioner is infamous for being a role you give a national politician who is still in favour with the leadership but perhaps has lost popular support. Just look at the past roles of the people who get nominated to these positions by their respective governments. There's an incredible number of ex-representatives, and often not ex- by choice but because the electorate chose not to re-elect them.
The European Parliament obviously does.
Not in my country. While it operates a PR system, it's a party list, so again at a minimum it fails my personal accountability criterion. The only way for the people to remove a particular individual they don't like from power is, in this case, to remove everyone from that individual's party from power in that electoral region.
In fact, this is the same basic problem with many of the situations we've been discussing here. You can in theory indirectly influence which individual holds power. The catch is that your only way to remove them is some sort of nuclear option. Don't like your nation's choice for European Commissioner? No problem, just elect a different entire national government at the last election. Don't like the UK's current PM? No problem, just make sure no-one votes for any MPs in that person's party at the last election. Don't like the current European Commission President? Sorry, I can't help you much with that one because hardly anyone (including hundreds of MEPs, by the way) actually knows how she got the job.
The whole point of have a representatives is that they have the time and resources to educate themselves on the minutiae of state, and make better decisions than the general public. Not because they're smarter or better, but because they're better informed.
Again, so the theory goes. But as someone who has interacted with various MPs personally, and through them also with senior figures in government on a few occasions, I can promise you that it is a work of fiction in practice.
Just look at the nonsense MPs on both sides of the Brexit debate were shouting from the rooftops before the referendum. Or for something a little less inflammatory, try the arguments they've made about regulating business and technology, including in the EU measures we're discussing here and the roughly analogous UK plans also announced today. Those weren't the arguments of well-informed experts who have studied the issues and drawn rational conclusions. In many cases, they weren't even the arguments of a moderately well-informed member of the general public. And they were statements not just from elected representatives but often from senior government figures!
The truth is that there is absolutely nothing about our current system of government that requires our MPs to be qualified to make or capable of making better decisions than members of the public who are well-informed about and personally interested in any particular issue. Even those who are intelligent and trying to do a good job, as I'm sure many MPs actually are despite all the negative press they get, can't possibly become experts on everything and don't have the resources to staff it out. And even on issues they do choose to prioritise, unless they are members of the party in power and take a government position with all the strings that are attached to doing so, their power to influence policy is often very limited even when acting in quite large groups.
And the same is true of most other elected representatives and political appointments, whether in the UK or EU. This isn't about Brexit, or about being pro- or anti-EU, if that even means anything anyway. It's a problem with systems of government operating at national and international levels where those in power are so well insulated from the voting public that they don't require a popular mandate and aren't required to be accountable to the people for whom they supposedly act. That's not democracy, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word.
> In reality, the number of levels of indirection between you or me as ordinary people who vote in elections and Ursula von der Leyen as the most powerful person in the EU government removes any meaningful requirement for her to either achieve a popular mandate before taking office or accept any meaningful personal accountability for her performance while in office.
In my country (France) there is exactly one level of indirection between me and Ursula von der Leyen: the President (currently Emmanuel Macron). Of course my voice is only one among 60 million French citizens, and 450 million EU citizens. And yet since I personally voted for Macron and IIRC Macron is the one who proposed Ursula von der Leyen, the line is pretty straight... In the UK there would be two levels: you elect your MPs, that then chose the Prime Minister, that then chose the European Commission President and Commissioners.
But I understand what you say. I had heard about Ursula von der Leyen as Germany defense minister before she became President of the European Commission (but that's only because I pay some attention to European defense affairs), yet when I cast my vote for Macron, I wasn't quite expecting to be voting for her.
I would prefer for the head of the European Commission to be elected by European MPs, but that would give too much power to the EU, a big no no for many EU members (including UK, at least while it was part of the EU). Notice the irony in that it's usually the political parties that criticize the EU the most for being undemocratic, that are the ones that oppose it becoming more democratic the most. It's disingenuous, yet logical, because a more democratic EU would have more power, so if you are anti-EU you don't want that.
As things stand the European Commission is only doing what the European Council is asking them to do. Which is somewhat ok (as in democratic), but lend itself more to shenanigans between states. If the European Commission was instead bound to the European Parliament, it would care less of the member states, and more of European citizens...
> And more generally, European Commissioner is infamous for being a role you give a national politician who is still in favour with the leadership but perhaps has lost popular support. Just look at the past roles of the people who get nominated to these positions by their respective governments. There's an incredible number of ex-representatives, and often not ex- by choice but because the electorate chose not to re-elect them.
In France it's usually perceived as a promotion. Our previous representative (Pierre Moscovici) was rather popular, and the current one (Thierry Breton) isn't even a politician: he was the CEO of Atos (a competitor of IBM I would say). Although he was minister once, from 2005 until 2007, so he is not a complete newbie in politics. Isn't it somewhat ironic that left-leaning France is sending a successful CEO to the European Commission, while UK is (was) recycling failing politicians?
> How, specifically, should someone do that in practice? Does someone cast an anonymous vote to indicate their preference? Will some robust system then make an objective determination of the outcome based on the popular vote? This is how the people customarily determine their representatives in a representative democracy.
Well it up to each national government to decide this process. If you're not happy with the way your national government makes this selection, then I encourage you to reach out to you national government representative and make your views heard. If it's something you really care about, then start a grassroots movement, or join a large national political party, and advance change the same way you would for any other domestic issue.
It seems like at very large, and undemocratic, over step for the EU to dictate how national governments run their affairs within the boundaries of the treats that define the EU. Something that every national government in the EU ratified. If you're not happy with how your national government ratified those treaties, then I again recommend the above, contact your local national government representative and make your views heard.
> European Commissioner is infamous for being a role you give a national politician who is still in favour with the leadership but perhaps has lost popular support.
This is hardly a surprise. The whole point of European Commissioners is it's how national governments retain their own sovereignty. Of-course they're going to give the role to people they know and trust, they want them to be aligned with their own national interests, not the broader EU interests. Once again, you don't like it, talk to your national government, this is their choice, not the EU's. Most people in the EU with a federalist world view would much rather see more direct democracy within the EU, with a reduction in power of national governments in the process.
> so again at a minimum it fails my personal accountability criterion.
You have a strange concept of what personal accountability means, why does the electorate need a direct method of removing an individual? How would that even work? Not to mention the issue that it turns the entire political system into little more than a popularity contest. People who are good national leaders are not always good campaigners, and good campaigner are not always good leaders. Boris Johnson in the UK is a classic example of the latter.
> Don't like your nation's choice for European Commissioner? No problem, just elect a different entire national government at the last election. Don't like the UK's current PM? No problem, just make sure no-one votes for any MPs in that person's party at the last election.
Well interestingly have a healthy PR system with many parties makes this very easy. When your government is made up of many parties collaborating together, it's easier for the electorate to just vote for someone else, without it causing a huge swing in government direction.
I notice that in your previous comment, you talk about how terrible FPTP is, now your saying the PR is also bad. What exactly do you want?
> And the same is true of most other elected representatives and political appointments, whether in the UK or EU. This isn't about Brexit, or about being pro- or anti-EU, if that even means anything anyway. It's a problem with systems of government operating at national and international levels where those in power are so well insulated from the voting public that they don't require a popular mandate and aren't required to be accountable to the people for whom they supposedly act. That's not democracy, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word.
I'm glad you recognise that you're demands aren't fulfilled by any current form of democracy anywhere in the world. But, you know, this whole democracy thing is still a work in progress, to quote Churchill
> No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time
I'm personally not ready to throw the towel in just yet. Sure the EU needs work, I don't disagree, but I don't think it fundamentally less democratic than any other democratic government. Humanity is still trying to figure out this whole fair and equitable division of power and resources. And rather than just rubbishing all the work so far, I much prefer to focus on area where it's really worked. Such as the 75 years uninterrupted of peace the Europe has had, thanks to the EU, to grow and prosper into a place where countries like the UK can throw a tantrum and storm off, and no one needs to worry about a war.
Well, I'm a Brit, so the only response I can offer to much of your comment is that apparently enough of my fellow voters did feel strongly enough about these issues that Brexit was the result. Obviously not everyone agrees that leaving the entire organisation was a desirable or proportionate response to its perceived flaws, but that's what happened.
I'll address a couple of your other specific points directly.
You have a strange concept of what personal accountability means, why does the electorate need a direct method of removing an individual? How would that even work? Not to mention the issue that it turns the entire political system into little more than a popularity contest.
The argument is that representatives who have no credible accountability for their actions are free to misrepresent the people they supposedly act for. It creates a principal-agent problem.
As for how it would work, elections where individual candidates are personally supported by votes is one major factor. Powers of recall for representatives who fall far short of the expectations of their electorate are also not unusual, though obviously not universal.
And democracy is inevitably a popularity contest at first anyway. Only after someone has held office for a while can you judge them on their actions rather than their words. For example, when Johnson was elected in December 2019, I doubt many people voting for his party realised that the next year was going to be dominated by something very different to Brexit. At this point, if enough people felt that the Johnson government's response to the coronavirus situation was inadequate, a situation that was barely conceivable at the time the people last voted, is it not reasonable in a democracy that the people should be able to choose new leadership instead of enduring policies the current government had given no substantial indication about before the last election and any consequences they may have for public health?
I notice that in your previous comment, you talk about how terrible FPTP is, now your saying the PR is also bad. What exactly do you want?
I didn't say PR was bad in general. I said party list systems fail my criteria for individual accountability of representatives, which they do. I consider this a significant democratic deficit, and one which could have been avoided by using a better voting system at the relevant elections. Nevertheless, it still results in a more-or-less proportional representation, and in that respect it is clearly superior to FPTP.
> Can a citizen who is governed by the EU meaningfully influence who is doing that governing? In particular, can a large group of citizens affect who holds power within the EU and vote out those individuals they don't want, so any individual office holder has some degree of personal accountability to the electorate?
In theory, yes. But it would take a huge group of people. Which is practically impossible these days.
So you are right, there is a serious deficit of democracy, not only in the EU, but everywhere imo.
I realised after I wrote my original comment that I forgot to add a rider along the lines of "without causing profound and possibly unwanted side effects", which is often the fundamental problem with having indirectly elected (aka appointed without a popular vote) people in positions of power.
And you're right, this is a very widespread problem today. That doesn't mean we shouldn't acknowledge the issue and challenge the status quo where opportunities present, of course.
I don't see how Brexit was supposed to fix an alleged EU democratic deficit when the UK suffers from the same problems - even more so, because most EU countries don't have FPTP.
In fact the EC is just the EU's version of the UK cabinet, but on a bigger scale. Everyone present is elected by their national voters, but there are - as yet - no direct EU-wide elections for specific EU posts.
Opponents of the EU criticise this while simultaneously being furious at any hint of closer political union which might make direct EU-wide elections possible.
Just to be clear, I'm neither arguing for nor arguing against Brexit here.
Personally, I am a politically interested floating voter with no party affiliation. On the specific issue of Brexit, I have always had mixed feelings, for the simple reason that I expect it to have both some good and some bad effects for both the UK and the EU27, and I'm not sure anyone truly knows what the balance between them will end up being in the long term.
Something that does matter to me very much is how we run our governments, and that governments act with popular support and are accountable to their people. On this count, I do indeed make very similar criticisms of the way the EU operates and the way our own system of government operates here in the UK.
In that case I don't understand your point. You seem to be arguing for direct representation in the previous comment and arguing against it in the comment below.
I'm not really arguing for or against direct representation as such. I tend to judge democratic systems by their practical effects. Do they result in governments that act with popular support? Are the individuals who achieve power within those governments accountable to the people they supposedly act for, such that there will be consequences for them personally if they don't faithfully act for the people and do a decent job of it?
It's true that directly elected representatives are, in some situations, more likely to meet those standards. Indirectly elected officials are, by the nature of the system, not in need of a personal popular mandate to achieve power, nor directly accountable to the people, and the gap widens as more levels of indirection separate the official from someone who actually had to win a popular vote.
But I'm not necessarily arguing for directly electing everyone in public office. I don't think that works very well in practice either, because voters get election fatigue and anything but the big ticket elections can easily end up being more about which candidates have the best PR and spin rather than the best policies on the issues.
What I do think would be a big improvement in many cases is directly electing the people at the top of a system of government and having appointed officials subordinate to them. Many of the democratic deficits identified in this discussion, from forming the European Commission to choosing the PM and by extension the government in the UK, are examples where the lower level representatives are the only ones who actually have to win an election, and then some number of averages of averages up the tree you get the people with most of the real power being isolated from needing to attract or maintain popular support. I don't think this kind of arrangement is healthy for democracy, and I think forcing direct elections for those most senior positions would go some way to fixing the problem.
She was nominated by the Council of Europe (comprised of the heads of state for each of the EU nations), and confirmed by the European Parliament (which represents the European electorate).
That is a very uncharitable and weak interpretation of the grandparent. For the parliamentary elections, the bigger parties agreed to try to fix democracy deficits by promising to elect a nominated candidate (Frans Timmmermans and Manfred Weber) as president of the commission depending on which block won in parliament. Yet, after the election, in a typical EU backroom deal, von der Leyen was elected. So it is quite fair to say that no constituent voted for her in any meaningful way.
The UK has exactly the same opacity. People vote for parties, and the winning party can replace its leader at any time. Voters have exactly zero input into who is chosen. That choice is down to the party hierarchy, with some token show-voting from party members once a shortlist has been selected.
This is not true, and the most recent election in the UK is strong evidence of this.
UK voters know which parties they are voting for, their platforms, and their leaders, turnout is high, and there is general awareness of the issues.
In mostly the same way in other 'good' EU nations.
Parliament can fall if there's a lack of confidence in leadership, particularly on an important issue, in which case, there's an election. This happen with Johnson in the UK wherein there was an 'issue election' called and people were well aware of the issues.
This was actually a pretty strong and democratic process: Johnson had not been elected, so he went to the polls and people had material, meaningful input.
In proportional representation systems, leaders can change without elections as well (see: Sweden, Finland etc.) and it's not exactly perfect but it works well enough.
The 'good' European nations have pretty good democracy at the national level.
It's at the EU level that it's all Byzantine. Pun intended.
It's only opaque if you don't care enough to study the question. Ursula von der Leyen was chosen by the members of the European Council.
The European Council, among other responsibilities, "decides on the EU's overall direction and political priorities", and "nominates and appoints candidates to certain high profile EU level roles, such as the ECB and the Commission". [1] If you have to know only one thing about the EU, it's that one: power lies in the hand of the European Council.
The current members of the European Council are: Alexander De Croo for Belgium, Boyko Borisov for Bulgaria, Andrej Babiš for the Czech Republic, Mette Frederiksen for Denmark, Angela Merkel for Germany, Jüri Ratas for Estonia, Micheál Martin for Ireland, Kyriakos Mitsotakis for Greece, Pedro Sánchez for Spain, Emmanuel Macron for France, Andrej Plenković for Croatia, Giuseppe Conte for Italy, Nicos Anastasiades for Cyprus, Krišjānis Kariņš for Latvia, Gitanas Nausėda for Lithuania, Xavier Bettel for Luxembourg, Viktor Orbán for Hungary, Robert Abela for Malta, Mark Rutte for the Netherlands, Sebastian Kurz for Austria, Mateusz Morawiecki for Poland, António Costa for Portugal, Klaus Iohannis for Romania, Janez Janša for Slovenia, Igor Matovič for the Slovak Republic, Sanna Marin for Finland, and finally Stefan Löfven for Sweden.
If you don't like the direction of the EU, ask your representant to do something about it. Otherwise pick another one. They are all democratically elected (directly, or indirectly in parliamentary systems).
The EU is currently based upon the Treaty of Lisbon [1] signed in 2007 after the referenda of 2005 for the new constitution (Spain yes, France and Netherlands nay)
Yes, exactly. Nations gave away sovereign, constitutional powers literally after their populations boldly rejected the terms, in a fair and open democratic processes.
Other European nations, verging on 'voting no' were denied the chance precisely because the EU apparatus knew what the outcome would be.
There's basically no defence of that issue, and the patronizing arguments defending 'indirect' nature of democracy of the EU wear thin - voters have no material impact on the EU, which is how it was designed, very much on purpose.
The limitation that MEPs have no ability to introduce legislation or frankly drive any of the real legislative process is by design.
It's mesmerizing to watch legions of young people defend an undemocratic system that their ancestors literally fought for 2000 years to overcome, with literally millions dead. 'Reason' lasted only one generation, before ostensibly well meaning actors took away the rights of the plebes before their eyes, and convinced them that it was in their best interest.
There is obvious need for reform, and if there was, I'll bet Norway and UK would be part of it, and possibly even Switzerland.
> It's mesmerizing to watch legions of young people defend an undemocratic system that their ancestors literally fought for 2000 years to overcome, with literally millions dead.
It's mesmerizing to watch legions of young people defend a Union they grew up in with no wars, with relative economic stability, with open borders and unencumbered travel. Compared to their ancestors who literally sacrificed millions of people fighting over each square millimiter of land for centuries on end.
> There is obvious need for reform, and if there was, I'll bet Norway and UK would be part of it, and possibly even Switzerland.
Norway and Switzerland are not part of EU [1]. UK has left the EU and it will be fascinating how it will function now that it has severed basically all ties with the EU.
[1] They are a part of the Schengen Area and various other treaties. They are, however, tightly integrated into the EU and are basically bound by most of EU's laws.
"It's mesmerizing to watch legions of young people defend a Union they grew up in with no wars, with relative economic stability, with open borders and unencumbered travel."
A little bit like a Chinese citizen, defending their lack of democracy 'because 7% growth every year and stability!'.
Not only are things things 1) possible without the EU, 2) they were mostly put in place long before the body politic existed (the EEC is a primary driver of the above) 3) it has nothing to do with the democracy deficit.
"UK has left the EU and it will be fascinating how it will function now that it has severed basically all ties with the EU."
The UK has not 'severed all ties' ... but, are you truly asking how it's possible for a sovereign nation to function without the EU?
How does Australia function?
How does Japan function?
?
They will all get along mostly fine.
Again - none of the arguments given point to any reasonable underlying motivation for denying EU citizens the right to chose their leaders.
--> EU citizens are denied the right to vet, or vote for the leaders and their platforms, their elected officials cannot enact legislation, and their ability to censure the non-elected leaders (this is maybe the most important power) is basically non-existent.
Yes, a bit. A very tiny bit. And your inability to empathise with these people is telling.
> The UK has not 'severed all ties' ... but, are you truly asking how it's possible for a sovereign nation to function without the EU?
By spending decades building relationships with other countries.
The EU is UK's largest trading partner. It is a huge common market with no borders, barriers, or tariffs. The EU has trade agreements with over a hundred countries that all members benefit from. Including, yes, Australia and Japan.
By severing ties the UK establishes a barrier between itself and EU common market, it exits all trade agreements between EU and other countries, and so on and so forth. It will be decades before the UK re-establishes similar deals.
> EU citizens are denied the right to vet, or vote for the leaders and their platforms
Just a few years ago I voted in EU parliamentary elections. That doesn't sound like "denied the right to vet or vote".
By mining huge amounts of raw resources and selling to their near by neighbours as well as the rest of the world.
The U.K. doesn’t have access to any useful raw materials apart from perhaps coal.
> How does Japan function?
Through massive government borrowing. Their debt is 223% of GDP. Now it hasn’t really bitten them yet, but it’s increasingly looking like it’s gonna be a serious problem for them.
I’m not either of those options is something I would pick for the U.K.
> ancestors literally fought for 2000 years to overcome, with literally millions dead.
Not sure how good your history is. But the EU was built by an ancestors who were fed of fighting and dying by the millions in wars that did nothing to actually improve people lives.
The whole purpose of the EU from day zero was to ensure lasting peace in Europe, and given there haven't been any domestic European wars since its creation, I would say it's been pretty successful.
"The whole purpose of the EU from day zero was to ensure lasting peace in Europe"
?
You do realize the EU as a body politic is very recent?
(Not sure how good your history is. ?)
1) Yes, major powers who have economically integrated tend not to fight, that's great. It's the same all over the world. The US doesn't fight Japan either.
2) Europe's true sovereign guarantor, the US and their Nuclear Umbrella, which is the other 1/2 of the equation.
'The EU' is long after the fact.
Moreover - it's besides the point - as I articulated, the EU has fundamental flaws with respect to democracy that can't be addressed with any reasonable argument it seems.
EU citizens have little to no influence over their body politic, because all the power is a few points indirection away from their reach.
Europeans were told after the election who their anointed leader would be, what her political platform was, and what her vision for the EU was.
Just consider why for a moment the EU doesn't require leaders to be publicly announced and vetted before elections? Wouldn't that be a highly rational, reasonable, and arguably necessary element for legitimate democracy?
What were EU leaders thinking when they definitely decided that this would not be required?
It's absurd.
Many citizens saw it was absurd, voted against the Constitutional Treaty, and it was passed anyhow.
> Europeans were told after the election who their anointed leader would be, what her political platform was, and what her vision for the EU was.
> Just consider why for a moment the EU doesn't require leaders to be publicly announced and vetted before elections?
I'm from Italy. This is exactly what our Constitution provides about our Prime Ministers. They can be anybody, even without a seat in Parliament (or current Prime Minister doesn't.) The President of the Republic appoints them, probably even you because I don't see requirements about citizenship or residency. They must be confirmed by a vote of the Parliament (50%+1) and that's it. Actually, if they are not confirmed they still are Prime Minister until the President appoints somebody else. You can check Articles 92 to 96 of the Constitution at http://www.senato.it/documenti/repository/istituzione/costit... (PDF, English) from the site of one of the chambers of the Parliament.
I don't particularly like this but it's an example of how that is usual in Europe. Many other countries don't have direct elections for their leaders. Given this status it's normal that we don't elect the President of the Commission.
Furthermore what really matters is the Council, made by the leaders of each country. The Commission is the government but the real power is in the Council. A Commission going against the Council doesn't have any political backing.
I fail to understand how your particular case works. Not having a horse in the race but just a piece of paper you don't care about doesn't help you to make a point, which is what exactly?
I was replying to a comment that said: "The EU is its citizens. So in a sense the EU did create its citizens." I tried to show that I was a counter-example.
Of course the EU created her citizens, do you think European citizenship is some sort of fact of nature? Like people woke up in Europe in a cave and were like "Yeah of course we're cosmopolitan citizens of the United European states" ?
All the rules, all the borders, all their values have been created, quite hard earned in fact, with a lot of blood and sweat along the way I might add, even more so than at an Apple smartphone factory if you can believe it.
You might want to check what the Treaty on European Union (Title II, Article 9) says about that:
"Every national of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship."[0]
It is possible to possess a citizenship without owning any legal documents that mention that fact.
Governments do however create corporations, which is an artificial structure that can only exist due to government control over the intersection between the marketplace and the legal system.
I'd be tempted to think the concept of "corporations" pre-dates "government" as we know them today, and these secular traditions were merely enshrined in Law.
you know what sort of corporations you get without governments? without schools and universities that educate their employers? or the research that has supported ALL the technologies that these companies have exploited? or build ALL the infrastructure (roads, electricity, water...)
Now the EU is saying the same thing to Apple. It is their market, and they dictate the rules. Which is perhaps a taste of Apple's own medicine?
I wonder what those people who keep saying it is Apple's platform they can do what ever they want had to say?
I sometimes wonder had Apple not been such an arse with its App Store and monopolistic rules. Would these regulations ever come up.