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Remainers, how undemocratic would the EU have to be for you to stop supporting it?

Spoiler

so TL;DR: the EU commission can completely control the boundaries and direction of the EU parliament, the EU parliament has almost no power at all, the EU parliament has no real democratic ties to the commission whom propose (and utlimately usher in) the laws and the EU commission president will never be appointed via electoral discussion or consent based on its privacy and "all or nothing" ultimatum to such nations/MEPs. yes, they can reject laws proposed, but the commission doesn't need to propose laws for the parliament in the first place and can simply bring in directives instead of regulations, meaning they will only propose laws they believe they will succeed with. the EU parliament, also, will never have the ability to get rid of *any* laws - part of democracy is about being able to scrap old governments' laws, but the EU doesn't allow for this basic democratic element, and once a law is a law, then it is a law basically forever because the MEPs cant reverse a vote that the commission allowed them to hold.

if the EU commission doesn't have to do anything the MEPs want, and the council of ministers (in terms of treaty changes) only requires one country to veto a proposed constitutional amendment~ (for democratic changes), how will democratic accountability ever be advanced within the EU, firstly? and the bigger question: if you can completely justify the EU in terms of economics against all its problems (democracy, immigration, bad laws, etc) how undemocratic would the EU need to be for you to consider the economics to be secondary in their importance? if the EU was to become a united states of europe with national parliaments being like local councils (as regional governments in federal systems actually have far more power than national parliaments do at the moment!) tomorrow, would you still be telling me economics > democracy? how is the situation not already too bad? how much lower would the EU need to sink democratically for you to think "maybe this institution is illegitimate"? would you still be saying "it is legitimate" if it scrapped the (powerless) parliament but caused the UK to become technically wealthier based on this absence of local democracy? give me your thoughts because I find this absence of objectivity pretty confused in that it seems to set an ultimately arbitrary or principally non-existent value of democracy for the sake of slightly more money (argued) - this can surely extend infinitely without some kind of higher principle involved that favours democracy?

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 1

ATW1

Remainers despise democracy. I was told that democracy is 'overrated' by a Remainer on this site yesterday.

Reply 2

typonaut

Can you tell us what the sources for your assertions are?

What are the "bad laws" you are objecting to?

If the Commission has powers, it is because the national governments, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament has given it those powers. All of these bodies are democratically elected, in one way or another.

The UK government has similar powers in many cases. It can issue statutory instruments, without going to parliament to gain democratic approval. You never get to vote on whether laws are adopted or not, and potential governments only ever give you a bare outline of what their five year legislative plans are in their manifestos.

Reply 3

Dez

I suppose if the EU decided to set up an unelected upper house comprised entirely of wealthy/successful people with no accountability whatsoever, added a catch-all veto and gave it to the eldest member of a single family who would then pass down that veto to their eldest child each generation, and switched from using proportional representation to first-past-the-post for all their elections. Then the EU might start to look "undemocratic".