I think the crux of the problem is really the undemocratic nature of the EU. For any member-state, the decisions and laws at the EU level are almost as important—and in some things even more—than the ones at the national level. Yet the institutions are largely non-democratic. It is unacceptable.
I like to remind people that the French (and I believe a few other nations) voted against the current EU constitution in a referendum before their governments went ahead and ratified it anyway.
What ended up being passed wasn't the same treaty, so that's not entirely true.
Complex situations like this can't just be reduced to a yes/no decision. What does a "no" vote even mean? Does it mean that nothing like that treaty can ever be passed? What about something which resembles the original but tries to address the concerns that were raised by the people who voted against it? What about just certain sections?
Simply "yes/no" is a very crude measurement to actually know what people think or what a good solution would look like. I was somewhat in favour of Brexit, but for very different reasons than Farage (basically: "fuck the fuck in or fuck the fuck off", but not this "we want all of the benefits but none of the costs"). This is why parliaments can amend bills and the like. Maybe we should choose people to represent each side so they can debate each other and reach a compromise. Oh, wait...
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I don't know about the French one, but the Dutch one was rife with misinformation and nonsense. You know, like that Brexit one, or the EU-Ukraine association treaty one there was a few years later. Except worse because there was bullshit and nonsense on both sides (the amount of "if you vote no" fear-mongering was pretty ridiculous).
Also, like Brexit when asked many people voted yes/no depending on how much they liked the government, or other factors which had little to do with the actual treaty being proposed.
One can say "a vote is a vote, and you shouldn't police motivations". There is something to be said for that. But on the other hand it's hard to ignore that the vote was made in the context of misinformation, and people didn't actually vote on the asked question.
In general I'm actually hugely in favour of more direct democracy, but every single referendum I've seen up close (in Netherlands and when I was living in the UK) has been nothing short of a clusterfuck, in addition to the more fundamental problems I mentioned. I didn't vote in any of them as I didn't think they were valid tools for good decision-making.
> What ended up being passed wasn't the same treaty, so that's not entirely true.
But then you only have indirect democratic legitimacy at best.
> Complex situations like this can't just be reduced to a yes/no decision.
Perhaps. Usually it should be retried. But you cannot just turn around and say you suddenly have legitimacy because the executive of a government once thought to ratify a constitution.
You also cannot just say voters were misinformed. Perhaps you are misinformed? This just displays a concerning understanding of democracy. To me that was the propaganda of that specific time in which they needed to ratify something without popular support, against democracy in that case.
> You also cannot just say voters were misinformed.
If people are stating things that are factually incorrect then you can, I think. Like I said, I'm not hugely comfterable policing people's motivations for voting one way or the other, but at the same time I also think it's foolish to ignore, especially when you're considering how to better organize these kind of more direct democratic measures: you need to evaluate how well they went.
For example "the treaty will allow Turkey to join the EU" was factually just incorrect: it didn't say anything about Turkey, and changed nothing meaningful about the EU entry procedure (and entrance of Turkey was never close in the first place). This nonsense was repeated in the association treaty with Ukraine.
How do you measure the "general line"? And how do you know if you've addressed something like that? What exactly is your definition of "representative democracy" in the first place?
This is really my point: you can't really have a conversation like that via a referendum. Repeat referenda are not really an option as your results will be increasingly biased towards the people with the strongest feelings/motivations.
Furthermore, the EU more or less worked the same before the treaty, and this treaty didn't really change that. In that sense it was a rather poor way to voice the specific criticism that the democratic nature of the EU should be reformed. I actually agree with that! I just don't think the referenda's were meaningful. If anything, it was counter-productive as the amount of nonsense mixed in with the better arguments just makes the criticism easier to ignore, and people who "just say no all the time" are generally easy to ignore in the first place (voting "no" is not a constructive way to improve things).
A referendum involves more than just filling in a ballot; there is a literal public debate involved, as I'm sure you know.
As you surely also know, the debate around the Lisbon treaty is a matter of public record. You can pull a random sampling of articles op/eds and political speeches from the time and see that this point is made again, and again, and again.
>Furthermore, the EU more or less worked the same before the treaty, and this treaty didn't really change that.
Yes, and it seems most of the governed weren't too happy about it.
Also, what point are you trying to make here? Are you suggesting that referendums should be ignored if the people vote against the status quo?
> Also, what point are you trying to make here? Are you suggesting that referendums should be ignored if the people vote against the status quo?
I feel I have made my points plenty clear, at length, and you're simply replying with assertions that don't even recognize what I said, ending with a ridiculous and insulting accusation.
Oh come on now, the Lisbon treaty was just a way to bypass the will of the people.
The people answered and the government of France should have listened, instead they came back with this treaty, changed a few tidbits and called it a day.
It was a slap in the face of democracy that was denounced by the right as well as by the left.
To say that this is a complex topic, so surely people don't know how to make up their mind because they may confuse the issue at hand with something else is laughable.
In a presidential campaign, it is perfectly valid to vote for someone because they speak well, wear nice clothes, say the right thing, or promise anything under the sun.
But a referendum should only be valid if people voted only for the question at hand and nothing else? That's very disingenuous.
If a government triggers a referendum and people vote no either because they don't like the proposal or because they don't like the party/government that brings the proposal forward, then this vote is as valid as any.
Is it allowed to be said publicly now? Just a year or two ago such comment would have been downvoted to oblivion, perhaps even risking a ban from whatever platform it was posted on.
I wonder where does it come from, treating EU as some sort of divine deity not capable of any wrong doing and such an effort to sweep its flaws under the rug while chanting "EU is great!".
It's probably the most corrupt and undemocratic organisation on this side of the planet.
As someone who has spent a fair bit of time both in the EU and the US, one thing that continues to puzzle me about the average Western European voter is his unshakeable trust in government institutions. Given what happened in living memory, I would expect a very different relationship with Big Government.
"Unshakeable trust" is stating it rather strongly; I think almost no one has that. Also "EU" is far too broad to generalize: Sweden is very different from, say, Spain, which is very different from Romania.
But in general, compared to average US views, there is probably more of a recognition that a government is needed, and that it's better than the alternative. But to be honest it's kind of hard to really say too much meaningful without specifics.
In my experience it goes a fair bit beyond that. There is a high tolerance for the involvement of government authority in such things as (to sample from recent history): "you shall slaughter your cattle to reduce greenhouse gases", or "you shall not leave your residence".
This is positively unthinkable in other parts of the word. Puzzlingly (or perhaps not-so-puzzlingly), large swaths of Western Europe are comfortable with this, despite having recent experience with totalitarian states that were positively brutal.
Say what you will, I do see a connection between the two.
> There is a high tolerance for the involvement of government authority in such things as (to sample from recent history): "you shall slaughter your cattle to reduce greenhouse gases", or "you shall not leave your residence".
I don't know what "slaughter your cattle to reduce greenhouse gases" refers to specifically, but Greenhouse gases are bad and reducing them is good. As I see it the only way to meaningfully take action on it is by government control. I don't actually like this but it's just the reality of the matter: companies will keep doing what nets them a profit, and millions of consumers can't really do an in-depth study on everything they buy, and the only party that can take meaningful action is government. I think climate change denial has always been primarily about opposition to government action, and not so much about the science of it.
"You shall not leave your residence", presumably, refers to COVID lockdowns? Most of the world had these kind of restrictions, including the US, and some locations much more severe than Europe. Many people thought they were a good thing and followed them because of that, and didn't blindly follow government for the sake of obeying the government.
And in both cases there was/is plenty of opposition too (presumably anyway, because I don't exactly know what you're referring to).
People can protest. People can vote different. They can go on the internet and TV and say politicians are a bunch of wankers. Comparisons with "totalitarian states" is just silly.
> Reducing crime is also good, but I'm sure you'd agree that the methods employed matter very much.
Of course, which is why I ask for specifics; I am not unaware of these things, but I am unaware what exactly you have in mind with a vague general statement.
I know the most about the Dutch case, which is not about greenhouse gases but nitrogen and its effect on soil quality (but that's a relatively minor detail for the purpose of this conversation) and that has been a point since at least the 90s. For decades serious measures had been delayed under protests from the farmers, until things really came to a head a few years ago.
Anyway, there were huge protests, for measures that had been delayed for decades, and the measures were changed. The newly established "farmers party" is doing reasonably well in polls for the upcoming elections. I don't really see how this is an example of a 'high tolerance for the involvement of government authority in such things as "you shall slaughter your cattle to reduce greenhouse gases"' that you mentioned. These have been the largest protests in the country since the 80s, so that seems like an odd definition of "high tolerance", or "unshakable trust".
The Guardian report about Ireland simply says "if we want to meet our goals, then we must reduce greenhouse gases". No one is forcing anyone to slaughter anything. Actually, that wasn't the case in the Netherlands either: it was just about a long-term reduction in the number of farm animals.
This kind of "looking out for the greater good" thing that the government does is hardly unique to the EU, or "positively unthinkable in other parts of the world".
Actually, no. I spent most of my time in France, Italy, Spain and the UK. I insist: most upper-middle class (and above) voters are stuck in what I can only qualify as a "govern me harder, daddy" mindset.
Hmm, if you were raised to dread the
"nine most terrifying words" I suppose you could see it like that, but southern Europeans most definitely don't look at their institutions with trust and confidence
For years now, the people who tried to say that the EU in its current form is not working have been silenced by the media or labelled as conspiracy nuts.
Maybe so but it wouldn't be the case if the other parties did their job and denounced the abuses from the EU when those happen.
Instead, it leaves the parties on the fringe as the only ones doing the criticizing.
Why should it be controversial to say that the EU is not perfect and that leaving it could work out better for certain countries?
Instead it's like no one can imagine a time where the EU did not exist and it's almost like we have forgotten that the EU is not the end all be all of everything.
But yes for sure there should be other parties, or/and the tiny ones that do a great job on internet matters such as the pirate party should get a lot more votes.
It’s okay when the EU goes after those evil American BigTech companies since the only thing that the EU can “innovate” on when it comes to tech is legislation
Maybe it was spillovers from "Brexit" arguments where some UK people thought any critique of the EU was in support of Tories? I mean, since when is complaining about the EU controversial otherwise? You can still see some bitterness regarding Brexit where brits are mocked for choosing the wrong path etc.
I distinctly recall that the omertà on this particular issue predates Brexit ... by about 15 years. There was a brief outcry when the EU constitution was ratified before the topic suddenly and mysteriously vanished from public discourse (at least, insofar as such discourse took place on mass media).
Ye ok I was too young at the time to notice. I agree with the phenomena though. Unless you look you don't notice really. It is like if someone presses a switch and the consensus changes for no reason at all.
The 'institutions' consist of the Parliament (directly elected, but with limited powers), the Commission (effectively the Civil Service, develops policy but has no power other than what is delegated to it), and the Council (where each country is equally represented, and is the real decision making body of the EU).
So in fact the institutions are entirely democratic, and arguable more democratic (and less dysfunctional!) than their counterparts in the US and China (the other two super blocks).
Even if we had a perfect democratic process, she is decently well loved by
council members because they don't understand what she is saying. The is doubly true for EU citizens, although the parliament couldn't even influence this proposal in any kind.
