What you’re describing is a republic not a democracy.
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Humanius@lemmy.world 7 months agoThe EU is a democracy.
While it’s not perfect (no system is), each of the bodies that make up the EU legislature are democratic:
- The European Parliament is directly elected in European elections every five years
- The European Commission is made up of commissioners from each country, which are in turn appointed by their democratically elected governments
- The European Council consists of the heads of state or governance, which are also democratically elected in the respective countries.
- The Council of the European Union is made up of government ministers, which are appointed by the democratically elected governments.
Not every body is directly voted on, but each body comes forth from a democratic election
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Nico_198X@europe.pub 7 months ago
a republic is, by definition, a democracy.
you are repeating authoritarian conservative propaganda.
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
No. Democracy has been redefined to be that but the orignal definition is direct voting on issues. Some state have this via voter initiatives.
We have the technology to create a democracy and there is no reason to muddle and gaslight ourselves into thinking a representative system is the same thing.
We need to stop reject the notion that it’s necessary because people don’t have the time to understand the bills. We have plenty of evidence they our representatives don’t bother understanding it because their incentives are not aligned with needing to understand it. They just carve themselves out of, as the legislation being discussed here does.
Nico_198X@europe.pub 7 months ago
representative democracy is democracy. not every democracy needs to be direct democracy. there’s more variety and nuance, that isn’t being “gaslit.” it’s just education.
Humanius@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Republic and democracy are not mutually exclusive…
Nico_198X@europe.pub 7 months ago
a republic is, by definition, a democracy.
Pirate@feddit.org 7 months ago
All I see is a bureaucratic nightmare. No democracy to be seen, starting from the fact all politicians in the EU are bourgeoisie.
Their servants are all unpaid interns who have a near zero chance of ever staying in Brussels. Those that don’t come from well-off families that can support them will never enter a single EU institution.
deafboy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It is a buerocratic nightmare, but filthy bolsheviks has zero rights to criticize it.
Pirate@feddit.org 7 months ago
Uh?
DawnOfTime@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
If the economy is not democratic, it is not a democracy
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
You are conveniently ignoring the facts that
- elected officials are only allowed to vote on legislation put forth and that legislation is heavily influenced if not entirely written by corporate lobbyists.
- lobbyists directly bribe their way to favourable outcomes
- democratic processes are simply ignored when inconveniencing the powers that be - see v.d. Leyen never being on the ballot yet holding the highest office
- corruption among high ranking EU officials is like a mafia, and they do not hold elected positions but get appointed, so they can’t be voted out.
JustJack23@slrpnk.net 7 months ago
They are theoretically, but coming from Eastern Europe all those levels of abstractions lead to “opportunities” for “managing democracy” and more importantly for alienation of the people because most people do not know what they are voting for or what each of their chosen representativea do when in office.
I am not saying it is a broken system, but I think it can be better and in particular direct participation can be greatly improved.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
Yeah okay. But what i have issues with; it is yet another step away from people (something medium+ sized democracies already have trouble with), leading politicians to make decisions in their own interest instead of for the imaginary numbers. On top of that, member states often move the unqualified but powerful/loved politicians there, because they “can do less damage there”.
So i have trouble calling it one, even though it formally is.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Yup, a democratic system should be judged on its outcomes, not its structure. If the decisions taken by a democratic organization do not strongly align with the wishes of the large majority of its members, then it isn’t democratic. There are plenty such examples playing out today. Besides, in representative democracy voting at the various elections is not enough to achieve highly aligned outcomes. By the time you get to the ballot box a whole lot of the fundamental decisions have been made without your input. E.g. who the representatives candidates are and what their candidate platforms are. This is how you get to “all the choices suck” and “vote for the least bad option” scenarios. Meanwhile the prebaked decions that lead to these scenarios are going to benefit the interested groups that made them.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Nah.
The European Parliament is impeccably democratic, its members selected by direct vote of EU citizens under a Proportional Vote system
The EU Council is way less democractic, being just made up of representatives of each local government in Europe with zero representation for any political forces not in government. It’s like a giant First Pass The Post system with electoral circles the size of countries, only worse so since citizens don’t directly vote for them, they vote for the people who nominate them. Also in practice there is very little oversight over their actions since the Press barelly talks about them.
The EU Commission is even less democratic than the EU Council, since it’s members are nominated by the latter, so it’s even more indirect. It’s supposed by tradition to be one comissioner per country so nowadays there are a lot of commissioners for “irrelevant thing” and the whole thing is the result of a massive game of horse trading and cronyism, especially the head, with the result that plenty of comissioners are complete total crap - the only time my country had somebody as the EU commission head, it was one if not the most crooked Portuguese politician ever to hold an international position (almost the opposite of the current head of the UN who is also a Portuguese) and it looks like Germany is currently suffering from the same problem.
Unsurprisingly, most of the “unbelievably authocratic” shit comes from the Council or the Commission.