> he explained it correctly to his wife (American lawyer), or if she verified.
Are you saying I am mixing it up now? My post acknowledged I had mixed it up before: given that the Commission is so powerful, I had thought it was comprised of the heads of state. I’m aware that’s not how it’s structured. I was explaining it to my wife because the reality is very complicated!
> I don't like the way US presidents are elected either, ignoring popular vote and including gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering cannot affect a Presidential election, because the Electoral College is elected based on statewide popular votes. And the logic behind the Electoral College is the exact same as the reason why so many EU bodies have one member per member state. The U.S. President doesn’t only represent the people, he also represents the states as sovereign entities. The states have chosen to move in the populist direction by providing to allocate their electoral votes based on statewide elections, but they have never consented to abandoning the prerogative to do things differently.
Moreover, the electoral college also is deliberately designed to produce more decisive results. In every case where the U.S. electoral college vote produced a different result than the national popular vote, the President’s party still won the Congressional popular vote. In those cases, a pure popular vote for the President would have produced a divided government. Most European countries avoid that by not directly electing their chief executive at all, and instead providing various ways for the party that controls the legislature to also control the executive.
Finally, in terms of “bypassing Congress,” what you’re describing is a general feature of Presidential systems where the executive is led by the same party as the legislature. For example, the French President has limited powers in theory. But in practice he’s very powerful if his party also controls the National Assembly: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/05/02/w...
“In most cases, these constitutional provisions end up being diluted in practice. When the president obtains a supporting majority in the Assemblée Nationale, they are less tied to following the Constitution to the letter and are able to propose legislation. In doing so, they then encroach on the role of government and in fact have significant power, often described as more substantial than that of heads of state in other countries.”
It seems to me that the nationalism issue is orthogonal to the representation issue. In the current structure, the EU government is even more powerful than the U.S. federal government. The U.S. federal government can only legislate in certain areas, and cannot compel the states to enforce federal law. This restriction is strongly enforced by the judiciary. That's why, for example, U.S. states effectively legalized marijuana, even though it's illegal under federal law.[1]
As I understand it, the EU can legislate in any area it wants. And member states are required to enforce EU law as if it were their own domestic law. The EU can even sue member states for failing to implement and enforce EU law.
So it seems like the EU government is both extremely powerful (the nationalism issue), but also very insulated from European voters (the representation issue).
[1] And I think most people would say that the federal government isn't even allowed to regulate individual use of marijuana. There's a 2005 Supreme Court case to the contrary, but I don't think it would turn out the same way under the current Supreme Court.
Thank you! I think that's all correct except (1), unless I'm misunderstanding something you wrote. My understanding is that the European Council appoints a Commission President-elect. The President-elect and the Council of Ministers then prepare a proposed slate of the other Commissioners, on suggestion from the members states. Then the European Parliament can vote on the entire slate thumbs-up or thumbs-down: https://commission.europa.eu/about/organisation/how-commissi....
To analogize to the U.S., it would be like if the National Governor's Association selected a Head President. Then you had a Senate of Secretaries made up of the secretaries of various executive departments in the 50 states. Then the Head President and Senate of Secretaries put together a slate for the Commission of Presidents. And Congress would then approve the slate up or down.
Why not just have two bodies like every other parliamentary system? Europeans elect an MP and each member state elects a Senator. Then the majority party in the Parliament appoints a Prime Minister, who can appoint a cabinet. Nobody is more than two steps away from an elected position.
I tried to explain to my wife (American lawyer) how the EU Commissioners are selected and she told me "I'm not having fun understanding this." I had thought it was just the heads of government from each member state. That would make sense given the immense power of the body. But that's apparently not how it works.
I understand, but my question is directed to the second point. Even assuming people like the EU in principle, it's constitutional structure seems bizarre and in need of major reform, at least from my American viewpoint. But there doesn't seem to be any movement to "mend it, don't end it." Do most EU supporters also think the constitutional structure of the EU is fine as-is?
> Some folks (mostly Americans) tend to think that their laws, their definitions of terms like "democracy", their beliefs, their norms, their culture - are all universal.
The American system was mostly cribbed from Europeans to begin with. Montesquieu, etc. The structure of the EU is bizarre according to the principles of democratic governance articulated by Europeans themselves.
But wasn't the will of the chambers here opposed to this law? I think what you're referring to is that parliamentary systems have various ways to push through legislation that's favored by the government but opposed by the parliament, which is what's happening here.
And the Commission is mostly appointed by the Council of the EU, is that correct? And the Council of the EU is composed of unelected ministers of the member states? And the EU Parliament can only vote the entire slate up or down?
To analogize this to the U.S., it would be like if you had a supreme body combining executive and legislative powers that was selected by the secretaries of health and human services from North Dakota, Florida, etc. Then Congress only got a thumbs up or thumbs down vote on the entire slate. That would be insane.
You don't have effective representation just because a vote happens somewhere in a causal chain. A body that's appointed by people who are themselves typically indirectly elected is a lot of layers of indirection.
For effective representation, you need a feedback loop between the voting and the policymaking at the other end. If you add all these layers in-between, voters are going to have a hard time figuring out how their voting is actually changing outcomes. Imagine trying to play a video game that has huge lag between the control input and what the character on screen is actually doing.
> - Once the Commission does that, the proposal goes on second-reading (despite the first-reading having defeated it) and it is established in a very PERVERSE way in EU law that to AVOID passing the proposal in second-reading you need ABSOLUTE majority
Wait, that's the rule? On the second go around, the default outcome is for a previously defeated proposal to pass unless you can muster an absolute majority?
This seems like if the U.S. President had a reverse veto: it could pass any law Congress rejected by forcing a second vote and the law would pass unless there was an absolute majority against. Didn't the EU people read Montesquieu about separation of powers? He was French!
That’s a possibility, but not the only one. The two most realistic ones are: we race ahead and maintain our status, or we slow down and open ourselves up to colonization.
If the purpose is to avoid centralizing power, why can the Commission make regulations that have the force of law without consent from either Parliament or the Council?
Okay, but couldn’t a more transparent and accountable structure have accomplished the same result? Why do you need a system with seven different bodies, more than one of which can make what’s effectively laws?
For example, why have an elected parliament that can’t even originate law, but an unelected commission that can make regulations that are effectively laws?
I have a simpler question. Even for people who favor strong cooperation under the EU, why the particular governmental structure set forth in the current EU constitution? Between the Council and Commission, it makes America’s Electoral College seem like a paragon of direct democracy. How and why did the structure end up so complicated and opaque?
https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.html
https://www.sciencetheearth.com/uploads/2/4/6/5/24658156/pla...