EU Democratic Deficit

looksee wrote: »

We elect TDs - the people elect - then trust the resulting government to use those people as appropriate. It might be more relevant if you were arguing that the Taoiseach should be elected by the people. I am a good deal less than enthused that Mairead McGuinness is now Commissioner but the time for disputing that will be at the next election. If we were voting for a Commissioner would it be from a pool of basically anyone, or would it be an already elected TD?

This discussion is using the appointment of Commissioners as a basis for claiming there is an EU democratic deficit, it has already been well established in the thread that the EU is a democratic institution, certainly more so than the UK government. It is a minor detail whether the system of appointing Commissioners is democratic. The other members don't seem to have any problem with it and the practical issues of making it an electable position would be an expensive complication considering the person appointed has already been through an election process.

This discussion was triggered by an argument relating to the UK, it was never clarified what the UK's level of democracy had to do with the EU's level of democracy, and their (the UK) decision to leave. It seems to be a discussion that is going round in pointless circles so I am away back to the main discussion.

It should be pointed out the whole “how to have a more democratic Commission issue” was raised during the Convention on the European Constitution, the U.K. definitely did not champion the idea that the Commission should be elected from the ranks of the MEPs (which is what the Benelux countries as led by J-C Juncker proposed). Rather they proposed a bizarre system where the Parliaments of each and every one of the member states would have individual votes on Commission President - in other words a person would need to approved by all the national Parliaments of the member states, an idea that would almost certainly require a campaign that promised mutually contradictory pledges in each Parliament!


(And for the record, while our proposal was better, it still was fairly bizarre)

mick087 wrote: »

Educational prejudice can be quite upsetting and demoralising but i don't actually buy into you thinking this is an issue. More than likely the real issue is i don't agree with some of the comments or maybe your ow personnel view point.

No i have never suggested the UK had to leave the EU because it was undemocratic you are deliberately exaggerating what i have said. I said this was one of many reasons that the UK voters decided to leave the EU not that they had to.

The UK like the EU lacks democracy in that the UK have a selected upper house and the EU have a selected commission.


Yes correct Johnson was elected and now he is accountable to his citizens in his constituency.


The EU did not change and the UK left.

How is Boris Johnson accountable to his citizens? His party won an overall majority with less than 43% of the vote and since there won't be another election for 4 years the only people he is now accountable to are his own party, as they are the only ones who can remove him from office. There is no way for the general public to remove a sitting PM from office. It is however technically possible for the Queen to remove him from office, very democratic right?

mick087 wrote: »

I would not be able to comment on the USA. But if the gentleman is in a unelected position of power and i lived in America id want to know how as a citizen i could get rid of him.

Yes why not why should we not be permitted to vote for our state commissioner?

If the commissioners were an elected MEP then yes you could compare this to a minister. A minister is first elected by its citizens as a TD. The citizens first vote for him to become a TD. A commissioner is not elected by citizens at any point.

So if the commissioner was selected from the elected MEPS then yes that would be more democratic and also answerable to its citizens.

This is not true. Senators can be appointed as government ministers in Ireland, and in the UK members of the HoL are also eligible to be appointed government ministers.

mick087 wrote: »

But we the citizens do not vote for the commissioners.They have great powers and are not accountable to it citizens. If we was to vote for our state commissioner he would then be answerable to its citizens.

I would disagree and say it is undemocratic to its citizens. Appointments as important as this should be made for and by it citizens

Again i disagree the selected are not accountable to it citizens

I don't see why it would be chaotic.

Why do you think they would be more or less accountable to their citizens? Surely the whole Golfgate fiasco shows the Phil hogan was still accountable to the public even though he wasn't elected.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, who was elected as a MP and is therefore accountable according to you, was photographed braking the social distancing rules his own government drew up and has yet to apologise.

So the recap on your argument the EU is undemocratic because there are important jobs that are unelected and that unelected officials are somehow unaccountable to anyone.

Every democracy on the planet has positions of importance that are not directly elected. This is not undemocratic. We elect governments to govern, and that includes appointing the right people to the right jobs. I doubt either of us know who would make a good Director of Public Prosecutions, or Garda Commissioner or head of the Central Bank and so we trust the people who we as a nation feel are suitable to run the country to make these decisions.

These people are not unaccountable in a functioning democracy. They answer to the people who appointed them, the government, who in turn answer to the public who voted for them.

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

Fair enough if you didnt mean anything nefarious. I just punched as too many claim that Brexit was foisted on the UK by a cabal of old rich men. Remain had a similar budget a little smaller but similar and if anything the old rich men supported Remain. Brexit was primarily a working class rebellion.

The vast majority of Labour voters voted for Remain. The vast majority of Conservatives ones voted for Leave.

Unless you are trying to suggest that the Conservatives are the party of the working class, and Labour isn’t, Brexit clearly wasn’t “primarily a working class rebellion“.

And there’s no way that Brexiters would have had a larger budget than Remain, if, instead of being backed by “a canal of rich old men”, they were relying on working class people passing the hat round in impromptu collections.

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

Yes because propositions in debates can be more highly motivated. Also I said primarily working class. Not entirely.

Not all conservative supporters are middle class despite the Tory brass being against it. They won over the older poorer Tory wing and they got over a 1/3 Labour and all of UKIP who are disportionately working class.

While the Conservatives do indeed attract a sizeable working class vote, they primarily appeal to the better off within British society. There is no way they’d pitch themselves as the party of the working class.

You also are overestimating the number of Labour supporters who supported Leave, and as the overwhelming majority of Labour supporters backed Remain, it clearly wasn’t a case of the working class revolting.

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

Remain was supported by a far larger rich cabal but they overestimated their support.

No, Remain adhered to the law and kept their spending within the limits set down in law. Leave, though, deliberately broke those laws and illegally overspent the limits.

And Leave did not manage to outspend the legal limits by relying on whip rounds - they were funded by a cabal of rich, old men, otherwise they’d never have close to reaching the legal spending limits, much less outspending them.