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EU can no longer afford national vetoes on foreign policy, says Germany's Scholz
(www.channelnewsasia.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2022
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That's rather far fetched. The Parliament of EU is very much elected, and the whole organization employs rather sound democracy.
Would you prefer smaller legistlative bodies for some reason?
True, but the parliament has effectively zero power.
Please elaborate.
The parliament is not represent the interests of the people of any individual countries, nor is it accountable to them. It would obviously be preferable to have sovereign governments that act in the interests of their electorate and can be held accountable by their electorate. This is not the case with EU bureaucracy.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "accountable". They represent the voters, that is, the citizens of EU. Is the "country" somehow more important layer of organization than the individual?
Accountable means that the public has leverage over the officials and is able to get rid of them when they don't act in their interest. The EU bureaucracy is very clearly not acting in the interests of the citizens of the EU which is pretty clear when you look at the current state of things in the eurozone. Individuals in the EU do not have any power over EU bureaucracy.
So it's not enough "accountability" to vote differently in the next elections?
Of course not, but that's the best that western parliamentary democracies offer. EU removes even this last vestige of accountability.
Okay, well how would your accountable democracy work then?
The way it functions in China, Vietnam, and Cuba where the government consistently works in the interest of the majority. Go read up on how political/economic systems work in these countries.
I agree that the accountability of western democracies is an illusion.
But you're not answering the question at all regarding China, Cuba and Vietnam. Basically you are just saying : They're accountable because they are.
Show us what actual political mechanism exist for the people to reclaim from the state when it's not working as intended there.
I gave a more detailed answer here https://lemmy.ml/post/372982/comment/232381
And of course, we can look at the tangible results of the systems in Cuba, China, and Vietnam where quality of life continues to improve and poverty is being eliminated. I'll give a few examples from China here.
Chinese government practically eliminated poverty
China also massively invests in infrastructure having used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century, they built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade.
90% of families in the country own their home, giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans.
Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it's the most populous country on the planet. NYT also points out social mobility is higher in China than in US.
And then there's the handling of the pandemic where it's all but eliminated in China with life getting back to normal and the economy growing, while we anxiously look at our fourth wave where our government left people out to dry to protect business interests.
But is this a function of the government being more accountable to the citizenry or is it just a phase where the government's highest interest is in building up a flourishing middle class? At any point if the government changed direction what recourse do the citizenry have over it?
I've been reading some threads you're in and everyone keeps asking the same question but you have yet to answer it.
The answer is that only time will tell. Nobody has a crystal ball to tell them what the future will be, we have to base our assessments on what we can observe and measure. Using these criteria Chinese government is acting in the interest of the public, and has been doing so since its inception. That seems like a pretty good track record to me.
Most complaints about the lack of EU institutions' democracy and high "bureaucracy-ness" is the exact opposite, that the people can't directly vote on things like the Commission president and Commission members, and that the EU-wide parliament has limited powers. As is, they are basically chosen by the various countries' politicians, hence the " bureaucracy-ness".
Whether the people vote directly or not is a tangential problem. The question is what fuels the decision making process in a particular bureaucracy. It seems pretty clear that EU is not acting in the interests of the people of Europe given how EU economy is doing, and how it's likely to be doing going forward.
The only country that's benefiting from all this is the US. EU is already starting to import commodities from US at a huge markup, and it will become further economically dependent on US going forward. We'll see capital flight from EU to US, and mass austerity programs for the Europeans as a result of the economic shock. All of this will help buffer US economy directly at the expense of the people of Europe. As a long term benefit, EU has been cleaved away from the east which has been the main geopolitical concern for US.
Is it impossible that the people of the EU are okay with tanking the hit, for now, if it's necessary in order to stand up to a bully, in their opinion, Putin's Russia?
Nobody's denying the US will profit of this, that's tangential.
Who sent all that military equipment to Ukraine: the governments of Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, France, Germany, etc... or the EU?
How is any of this an argument for the EU institutions' democratic deficit, which is what we've been discussing here. The EU seems aligned with the wishes of most of the countries.
If you want to claim liberal democracies themselves are undemocratic, you'll be moving the goal post then, because that's not what you've been claiming so far.
And here, I'll move it for you too. So, liberal democracies are just democracy for the capitalist bourgeoisie, more so than in China. If that's true, why are they choosing to ruin their economy, they're the first ones that want their businesses to do well, no, and for the economy to not stagnate? Are you claiming all of Europe's capitalists are somehow directly bought out by US money, to the extent that it's more so than what they lose by the economy going down? I don't think that's even mathematically possible.
Maybe it's an economically bad move to support Ukraine's fight, and it might end up having more instability as a consequence, but I'm pretty sure it was Europe's wish, as much as it can be.
The people in EU were not informed on the effects of the policy EU is taking, and now that they're finding that out they're increasingly unhappy with the policy.
Far from being tangential, this is central to why the conflict was provoked.
All of western weapons stockpiles are being depleted at an alarming rate right now. Meanwhile, British military think tank found that the west lacks industrial capacity to produce weapons and ammunition at scale. What that means that the weapons sent to Ukraine cannot be easily replaced now making Europe much more vulnerable than before. Not sure how that's in the interest of the people in Europe either.
What we've been discussing here is the economic war that EU got itself involved in and that's destroying European economies at the moment.
I would absolutely say that, but that's not central to the point I was making earlier.
Simple answer, it's because bourgeoisie are international. They're not the ones who are going to take the brunt of the damage from all this. The capital will move to other countries, largely to US, and then when European economy crashes these capitalists will buy everything up for pennies on the dollar. What we'll see will be a huge wealth transfer to the top, which is precisely what happens during every economic crisis.
The financial economy has no inherent value to it, it's tangible things like land, housing, factories, and so on that have value. When Europe crashes, people who anticipated the crash and weren't directly harmed by it will see a huge boon.
Many people in Europe have certainly been manipulated into supporting this conflict without being told all the facts. Now they're seeing the consequences, and that is already creating political blow back for the instigators.