In this case the separatists are outnumbered by the people who want to remain in Spain.
Prove it. Spain had their chance to negotiate terms for a fair referendum that both sides could recognize. Denying the legitimacy of any referendum, they guaranteed the secessionists would win, handing them a moral victory. The Spanish government has been so stupid in this whole matter that it lends extra justification for Catalonian independence.
I think it is actually on the separatists to prove they have more on their side than the other side. The Spanish government have indeed had the chance to negotiate, they didn't, hence the Catalan separatists should wait until there is a new Spanish government. There is nothing urgent about independence.
I fail to see that there is a moral victory for the secessionists, the only thing they have shown is that they do not care for the rule of law. The only thing the secessionists have on their side a deluded notion of that democracy is only about majorities of cast ballots. That is indeed one component, but in the end, democracy is about much more, including the respect for the rule of law. Maybe they would have had a moral point if the participation rate would have had been 95%, but at the moment, no.
The current Spanish government does not allow it. The Scots convinced the UK government to allow for an independence referendum. So, what you would need to do is to wait and try to convince the next prime minister, or the next next prime minister or the... sooner or later you are going to get a yes to have a local referendum.
Funny. I think that having a constitution that forbids any part to organize a referendum on independence can only happen in a banana > republic. It seems it's also possible in Europe.
The note on banana republic was about the rule of law, not what kind of law exists. In the end, the thing that separates a civilised place from a banana republic is the rule of law.
The Spanish constitutional court ruled that the referendum was illegal as it was __unilaterally__ organised. In Sweden for example, pursuing to split of a part of the country by unlawful means (including illegally organised local referendums) is high treason, punishable by life in prison. Belgium does not allow any of the regions to split off unilaterally. However, the separatists have quite an influence in the federal parliament so the Belgian government has devolved a whole lot of powers. Netherlands do also not allow for e.g Nord and / or Zuid-Holland to unilaterally decide to break off.
Note that sovereignty lies in the Spanish state, not in Catalonia, Catalonia is an autonomous region authorised by the state of Spain, hence it is up to the Spanish government and parliament to decide about this.
The Catalonian government has shown that they do not care so much about the rule of law, so they would not be let into the EU in the mid term future. There is simply no trust for it, not from any other member state.
In this case the separatists are outnumbered by the people who want to remain in Spain. It is indeed unreasonable to expect borders from 1945 to be maintained, but the rule of law is fundamental in the EU, and splits or mergers of states must be done according to law. For example, we saw Czechoslovakia split up peacefully, and Germany to re-unify. These processes were made according to law. As was the referendum in Scotland. However, for the case of Catalonia, the Catalonian government is keeping on ignoring the law, despite they are mandated to uphold it. Hence they should be tossed in jail.
There are tons of ways to do this in a legal way. But, the Catalonian separatists are not interested in matters of law, which just means that, if they break away, no one will trust them, because Catalonia will effectively be a banana republic without rule of law. So, they can look far for international agreements, and lets not forget that the EU will not let in a state where the rule of law is ignored.
You need to look up the definition of democracy and come back. Veto of an indirectly elected assembly, isn't a particularly useful instrument if your concern is democracy. Your concern should then be to improve the position of the directly elected representatives. The removal of veto has in many areas improved the democratic well-being of the Union.
For example, the head of the Commission is proposed by the European Council on a qualified majority voting. They is then elected by the European Parliament. That election was popularised using preselected commission presidential candidates in the previous election (they were selected during the normal European Party congresses). In any case, the election took place with this system in place, and when it came to the Council meeting, which should essentially just have proposed Juncker, given the election results (EPP won), the British government objected. Cameron left the meeting saying it is a bad day for democracy (implicitly meaning that it is bad that the people had chosen the EC president, instead of him in a secret backroom deal).
Had there been a veto, it would have indeed been a bad day for democracy as in that case, Cameron and Orban could have blocked the appointment of the now elected EC president. It is fair that Cameron didn't like Juncker, but Juncker was elected through the vote for the parliament.
Crime like rape and fraud? Running a private email server isn't a crime, I find it bad judgement, and probably breach of protocol, which would typically warrant some type of scolding from her former boss, but as all email was handed over, nothing to see here.
Now, for the rape, grouping and fraud charges, these are actual crimes of a bit more serious magnitude...
Maybe, but damage is already done. It is very difficult to now, in post-plebiscite UK to recruit young engineers from the rest of the EU. Most ones I have talked with are trying to go to Berlin instead of London these days. This really changed over-night, and it doesn't really matter what Kahn says, London already lost its appeal for most other EU citizens.
it is very easy, freedom of movement is fundamental for the tech companies which relies on recruiting labour from the whole continent. This is unlikely to be possible without having to go through a lot of red tape.
Last time we recruited from outside the EU, the red tape took close to 6 months to go through.
What everyone signed up for was in-fact an ever closing union, with intent of forming a proper political union. In the case of the UK, political union was heavily debated in the 1975. Although many people claim that they where deceived and they never discussed the political union, looking at the records of what was said during the 1975 referendum campaigns, and the debates in the UK parliament, it is clear that this is utter bullshit.
There are several issues, one is the secrecy of the talks. This is never good as secrecy will mean that fewer eyes look at it, which leads to bugs, and it prevents a public debate on the issues being discussed, I am not defending TTIP as such, there are some clauses that have been proposed that are very questionable from my perspective.
I am however defending the ratification process which is reasonable. Also the fact that you can file for arbitration is reasonable, as any type of law must be enforceable in some way (and treaties are law).
Schengen is about traveling, not working in another member state. Schengen is not the same as freedom of movement, it is the zone that does not check passports on border crossings. There are actually two such zones in the EU, the Schengen zone and the common travel area (which includes Ireland and the UK). The freedom of movement is another thing which means that you have the right to move to another country and _work_ there.
Any EU citizen can move to Ireland or the UK (well for another couple of years at least), even if those two member states are outside of Schengen. That is freedom of movement.
If any person _travels_ from one Schengen member to another one, there will be no passport checks. You drive over the border and only see a sign saying "Welcome to XYZ". That is Schengen.
As an example, some years ago, I moved to the UK and lived there for about 2 years. When moving to the UK, I exercised the right to freedom of movement to work in the UK, but I still had to show a passport when entering the UK as the UK is not in Schengen.
You again... can't you even get simple things right?
Switzerland, one of the EU's wealthiest economies with a very strong economy voted to leave Schengen in 2014. And it's outside of the EU. And it just said last week that it's no longer interested in joining the EU.
Switzerland did not vote to leave Schengen, the voted to abolish the freedom of movement parts of their association agreement with the EU. That agreement granted access to the common market and provided freedom of movement to EU citizens to go to Switzerland and Swiss to go to the EU and work.
And France rejected the EU, And The Netherlands rejected the EU. And Iceland ripped up it's EU application.
France and the Netherlands rejected the constitutional treaty, not the EU. They didn't want a constitution so we do not have one now. The result is that we keep on with amending treaty after treaty.
Note that there are significant differences between the constitutional treaty and Lisbon. For one thing the symbol part is gone, for another thing the constitutional treaty removed the "ever closing union" part which forms the basis for a lot of case law from the ECJ. In my opinion, the removal of that clause was enough to reject the constitutional treaty as it was written.
Iceland did cancel their application, I think this was the only thing you wrote that was actually correct.
This institution is the institution that gave us TTIP, the treaty that would give corporations the right to sue any EU government that introduces legislation that effects it's profits even when that government is legislating to protect workers rights or the environment or public services or food standards. When did I ever get to vote for them?
TTIP is not yet finalised and is the product of a request from Obama to have such treaty. Likely, in its current form, it will be rejected by the Council of Ministers and the EP (using majority voting), the Council of Ministers is controlled by member state parliaments, and they can mandate that the minister votes in a certain way. There are certain problems with the TTIP, but virtually all international treaties gives effected legal persons the right to sue governments or use an arbitration court to settle issues when one party violates the treaty and causes financial harm. Note that such law suites / arbitration procedures are only if the treaty provisions are violated. Any other legislative act that causes financial harm is not subject to such court proceedings.
I live in Europe and I can tell you without a doubt that the Commission is most certainly not directly democratically elected And the president was not elected by (EU citizen) voters either.
As you can guess from my sig, I do as well. And I can tell you without doubt that there where three major candidates (and some additional ones for other parties) for the commission presidency known before the last EP elections. Juncker (EPP), Schulz (S&D) and Verhofstadt (ALDE). The EPP got most votes in the EP election and hence, Juncker is EC president.
EU citizens did not vote for the Commission or the president or the seven vice presidents. Anything else is not democracy.
They voted for a party who had fielded a candidate for the EC president. Please note that the EC is an executive body, it does not have lawmaking power, that right is reserved for the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers.
If you truly live in Europe you would have noticed our tradition of parliamentary democracy, very few, if any, EU member states elect the executive.
The Commission differs from the other institutions in that it alone has legislative initiative in the EU. Only the Commission can make formal proposals for legislation: they cannot originate in the legislative branches. Under the Treaty of Lisbon, no legislative act is allowed in the field of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. In the other fields the Council and Parliament are able to request legislation; in most cases the Commission initiates the basis of these proposals. This monopoly is designed to ensure coordinated and coherent drafting of EU law.[48][49] This monopoly has been challenged by some who claim the Parliament should also have the right, with most national parliaments holding the right in some respects.[50] However, the Council and Parliament may request the Commission to draft legislation, though the Commission does have the power to refuse to do so[51] as it did in 2008 over transnational collective conventions.[52] Under the Lisbon Treaty, EU citizens are also able to request the Commission to legislate in an area via a petition carrying one million signatures, but this is not binding.[53]
You are touching on something important here, the EP and the Council of Ministers does have the power to demand that the EC make a legislative proposal, in case the EC ignores this without a valid justification (e.g. not in the EUs competencies), they can be dragged before the Court of Justice of the European Union. While it would be good if the EP had the power to write and approve motions directly, the current set up is not that bad. In fact, for the constitutional treaty it was proposed that the EP would get this right, but the demands where dropped as the same right would have been conferred on the Council of Ministers as well, the question is whether we would really have wanted that to happen, perhaps it would have been for the better. This said, the EU has been moving in the direction of giving the EP the right of initiative, so it will happen at some point. Small steps...
Regarding the petitions, indeed, if a petition would be in an area which is a national competency, why should the Commission act on it. There is a thing called subsidiarity. First, the petition should be checked for legality, and secondly whether there is any way it will pass. For example, if the EC are told by member states (the Council) that they will not pass any legislation of the petition, there is no reason to continue.
So the public can make a suggestion and the Commission can ignore them and the Council of Europe can make a suggestion and the Commission are free to ignore them. And if you read quotes of Jean-Claude Juncker you can see he has complete disdain for democracy, when he said that if France votes to reject the EU Constitution then they will just carry on regardless and that is exact
The commission is directly elected (for the president). Juncker was elected by the voters. Any vote on the EPP was a vote for Juncker. The rest of the members are indirectly elected by 1. parliamentary votes in the member states that results in a government that propose a commissioner and 2. european parliament elections, as the EP approves the commission as a whole (and also kicks out individual members).
Juncker does not pick the commissioners, he gives the ones proposed by the member state governments and elected by the european parliament a portfolio of tasks.
Does it matter who benefits as the fees have not been raised for the end customer? As for who benefits there are two groups, the end user / customer and the telcos from countries with lower amount of tourisms. The losers are the telcos from tourism dependent countries.
As for the expats, they benefit even with a local contract since they likely call their parents, siblings etc. It is not just the roaming that is hit, but also the rates for calling to other member states.
Some, say 10 years ago, it was very common to read about how people had been provided phone bills of several thousands, and in some cases tens of thousands of euros because they watched youtube without thinking about it when laying on a beach in Spain.
You ask who benefited, well, the people benefits, if any company benefits it is a positive side effect.
>"Cheaper flights: How often do you fly? Moving once across the continent may be usual for the US, it is very, very uncommon in Europe. Who benefits from cheap flights?"
Personally, usually between 1 and 2 times a month for business and personal reasons. It does vary quite a lot between people. In any case, I have lived in four different EU states so far. It is hard to give numbers, but for short stays (say 6 months to a year) you will find that say 10-20 % have tried this out at some point for studies or work, one out of 15-20 persons will at some point live in another state for a longer time. This isn't really US-level numbers where some states have 50% populations born in other states, but it is steadily growing.
This is actually causing problems now in that a large portion of the population in different countries are taxed but not allowed to vote. I.e. in the brexit case, 3 million EU citizens in the UK were directly affected but where only allowed to pay tax but not have a say in the issue, and secondly 1.5-2 million UK citizens outside the UK where not allowed to vote as you are only allowed to vote the first 15 years you live outside the UK. Looking at how close the results where, where these to vote, it would have had been a clear remain.
> "Roaming fees: How many people do you know abroad that abandoning roaming fees would benefit you. Besides, TANSTAAFL, telcos will not simply swallow the losses, so who gets to pay for corporations' benefit from cheaper international calls?"
When regulating roaming, they also reduced the inter network costs, so it does penalise the Spanish telcos which has a lot of tourists, but in general, no one suffers. About 50 % of my contacts live in another EU state and a lot of them travel around, a lot, for personal reasons and business. My wife for example have reduced her EUR 200 per month phone bills to EUR 50 per month.
> "Lasting peace: Mostly a side effect of corporations not wanting nation states meddling with their profits. Yes, it's nice to live in a safe environment, but don't act as if that's actually something they did for the people."
The Union was formed to create a lasting peace by tying together the member states in a mutual commercial dependence. Yes, this is a side effect of it costing too much to start a war inside the EU, but that was the main point of it...
Indeed, there is a story about how the Swedish PM complained about the Welsh wine served during a summit in the UK. The Italian PM then made sure to send over a whole box of Italian wine to the Swedish PM.
The commission isn't perfect, but it isn't undemocratic, at least relatively speaking.
Let's do some comparisons:
British PM: appointed by the queen (in practice taking the parliament results into account), cannot be subject to motions of no confidence as being the PM is a royal prerogative. In practice the PM candidates are known during the general election campaign.
Commission president: proposed by the European Council (where all members are directly or indirectly elected, except for the British PM), elected by the directly elected EP. The european parties pick candidates for a commission president and the European Council must pick the one with the most amount of parliamentary support.
British PM: Selects ministers, ministers not subject to parliament vote.
Commission president: Selects commissioners for their portfolios, commissioners are proposed by the member state governments and are subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The whole commission must pass vote in EP to be approved, the EP have defacto powers to get rid of individual commissioners.
The point with this is that the commission is elected directly and indirectly in the same way that the British government is. That is the candidate for the PM/president post is de-facto picked from the one the parties propose.
I have met several imigrants who are highly qualified people and who are not able to get a job. The high jobless rates in some of the groups is to a large extent simply based on racism (some times not intended).
One friend of mine, a guy of Iranian decent was sending out his job applications after graduating. After just getting the hand for 20 graduate level positions (not even an interview), he decided to not write his last name in the application and only used the initial (he was lucky to have a European first name). The result was 3 interviews on 3 applications and he was able to choose from the 3 jobs he was offered.
In the UK case, as they where the first, the outers could easily dismiss everything as scaremongering, however, as the predictions are pretty much coming true:
- Massive losses in the financial sector - Scotland will have second referendum - Northern Ireland may try to have a referendum - Etc
Further, the EU will not give a good deal in order to make an example of Britain. Other countries will not get any good deals either. The only option the UK has in order to preserve full internal market access is to join the EEA (which includes the free movement provisions).
Thus, the fallout on the UK will be massive in the end as the EU is a lot bigger than the UK.
The point is, the cost for leaving will be massive and it will be clear to anyone who attempts the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Prove it. Spain had their chance to negotiate terms for a fair referendum that both sides could recognize. Denying the legitimacy of any referendum, they guaranteed the secessionists would win, handing them a moral victory. The Spanish government has been so stupid in this whole matter that it lends extra justification for Catalonian independence.
I think it is actually on the separatists to prove they have more on their side than the other side. The Spanish government have indeed had the chance to negotiate, they didn't, hence the Catalan separatists should wait until there is a new Spanish government. There is nothing urgent about independence.
I fail to see that there is a moral victory for the secessionists, the only thing they have shown is that they do not care for the rule of law. The only thing the secessionists have on their side a deluded notion of that democracy is only about majorities of cast ballots. That is indeed one component, but in the end, democracy is about much more, including the respect for the rule of law. Maybe they would have had a moral point if the participation rate would have had been 95%, but at the moment, no.
No, there isn't. Spain doesn't allow it.
The current Spanish government does not allow it. The Scots convinced the UK government to allow for an independence referendum. So, what you would need to do is to wait and try to convince the next prime minister, or the next next prime minister or the... sooner or later you are going to get a yes to have a local referendum.
Funny. I think that having a constitution that forbids any part to organize a referendum on independence can only happen in a banana > republic. It seems it's also possible in Europe.
The note on banana republic was about the rule of law, not what kind of law exists. In the end, the thing that separates a civilised place from a banana republic is the rule of law.
The Spanish constitutional court ruled that the referendum was illegal as it was __unilaterally__ organised. In Sweden for example, pursuing to split of a part of the country by unlawful means (including illegally organised local referendums) is high treason, punishable by life in prison. Belgium does not allow any of the regions to split off unilaterally. However, the separatists have quite an influence in the federal parliament so the Belgian government has devolved a whole lot of powers. Netherlands do also not allow for e.g Nord and / or Zuid-Holland to unilaterally decide to break off.
Note that sovereignty lies in the Spanish state, not in Catalonia, Catalonia is an autonomous region authorised by the state of Spain, hence it is up to the Spanish government and parliament to decide about this.
The Catalonian government has shown that they do not care so much about the rule of law, so they would not be let into the EU in the mid term future. There is simply no trust for it, not from any other member state.
In this case the separatists are outnumbered by the people who want to remain in Spain. It is indeed unreasonable to expect borders from 1945 to be maintained, but the rule of law is fundamental in the EU, and splits or mergers of states must be done according to law. For example, we saw Czechoslovakia split up peacefully, and Germany to re-unify. These processes were made according to law. As was the referendum in Scotland. However, for the case of Catalonia, the Catalonian government is keeping on ignoring the law, despite they are mandated to uphold it. Hence they should be tossed in jail.
There are tons of ways to do this in a legal way. But, the Catalonian separatists are not interested in matters of law, which just means that, if they break away, no one will trust them, because Catalonia will effectively be a banana republic without rule of law. So, they can look far for international agreements, and lets not forget that the EU will not let in a state where the rule of law is ignored.
So was I, and I gave an example about why vetos is bad for transnational democracy.
You need to look up the definition of democracy and come back. Veto of an indirectly elected assembly, isn't a particularly useful instrument if your concern is democracy. Your concern should then be to improve the position of the directly elected representatives. The removal of veto has in many areas improved the democratic well-being of the Union.
For example, the head of the Commission is proposed by the European Council on a qualified majority voting. They is then elected by the European Parliament. That election was popularised using preselected commission presidential candidates in the previous election (they were selected during the normal European Party congresses). In any case, the election took place with this system in place, and when it came to the Council meeting, which should essentially just have proposed Juncker, given the election results (EPP won), the British government objected. Cameron left the meeting saying it is a bad day for democracy (implicitly meaning that it is bad that the people had chosen the EC president, instead of him in a secret backroom deal).
Had there been a veto, it would have indeed been a bad day for democracy as in that case, Cameron and Orban could have blocked the appointment of the now elected EC president. It is fair that Cameron didn't like Juncker, but Juncker was elected through the vote for the parliament.
Democratic reform in the EU has so far primarily been blocked by the UK. What are you smoking?
Crime like rape and fraud? Running a private email server isn't a crime, I find it bad judgement, and probably breach of protocol, which would typically warrant some type of scolding from her former boss, but as all email was handed over, nothing to see here.
Now, for the rape, grouping and fraud charges, these are actual crimes of a bit more serious magnitude...
Maybe, but damage is already done. It is very difficult to now, in post-plebiscite UK to recruit young engineers from the rest of the EU. Most ones I have talked with are trying to go to Berlin instead of London these days. This really changed over-night, and it doesn't really matter what Kahn says, London already lost its appeal for most other EU citizens.
it is very easy, freedom of movement is fundamental for the tech companies which relies on recruiting labour from the whole continent. This is unlikely to be possible without having to go through a lot of red tape.
Last time we recruited from outside the EU, the red tape took close to 6 months to go through.
What everyone signed up for was in-fact an ever closing union, with intent of forming a proper political union. In the case of the UK, political union was heavily debated in the 1975. Although many people claim that they where deceived and they never discussed the political union, looking at the records of what was said during the 1975 referendum campaigns, and the debates in the UK parliament, it is clear that this is utter bullshit.
There are several issues, one is the secrecy of the talks. This is never good as secrecy will mean that fewer eyes look at it, which leads to bugs, and it prevents a public debate on the issues being discussed, I am not defending TTIP as such, there are some clauses that have been proposed that are very questionable from my perspective.
I am however defending the ratification process which is reasonable. Also the fact that you can file for arbitration is reasonable, as any type of law must be enforceable in some way (and treaties are law).
Schengen is about traveling, not working in another member state. Schengen is not the same as freedom of movement, it is the zone that does not check passports on border crossings. There are actually two such zones in the EU, the Schengen zone and the common travel area (which includes Ireland and the UK). The freedom of movement is another thing which means that you have the right to move to another country and _work_ there.
Any EU citizen can move to Ireland or the UK (well for another couple of years at least), even if those two member states are outside of Schengen. That is freedom of movement.
If any person _travels_ from one Schengen member to another one, there will be no passport checks. You drive over the border and only see a sign saying "Welcome to XYZ". That is Schengen.
As an example, some years ago, I moved to the UK and lived there for about 2 years. When moving to the UK, I exercised the right to freedom of movement to work in the UK, but I still had to show a passport when entering the UK as the UK is not in Schengen.
You again... can't you even get simple things right?
Switzerland, one of the EU's wealthiest economies with a very strong economy voted to leave Schengen in 2014. And it's outside of the EU. And it just said last week that it's no longer interested in joining the EU.
Switzerland did not vote to leave Schengen, the voted to abolish the freedom of movement parts of their association agreement with the EU. That agreement granted access to the common market and provided freedom of movement to EU citizens to go to Switzerland and Swiss to go to the EU and work.
And France rejected the EU, And The Netherlands rejected the EU. And Iceland ripped up it's EU application.
France and the Netherlands rejected the constitutional treaty, not the EU. They didn't want a constitution so we do not have one now. The result is that we keep on with amending treaty after treaty.
Note that there are significant differences between the constitutional treaty and Lisbon. For one thing the symbol part is gone, for another thing the constitutional treaty removed the "ever closing union" part which forms the basis for a lot of case law from the ECJ. In my opinion, the removal of that clause was enough to reject the constitutional treaty as it was written.
Iceland did cancel their application, I think this was the only thing you wrote that was actually correct.
This institution is the institution that gave us TTIP, the treaty that would give corporations the right to sue any EU government that introduces legislation that effects it's profits even when that government is legislating to protect workers rights or the environment or public services or food standards. When did I ever get to vote for them?
TTIP is not yet finalised and is the product of a request from Obama to have such treaty. Likely, in its current form, it will be rejected by the Council of Ministers and the EP (using majority voting), the Council of Ministers is controlled by member state parliaments, and they can mandate that the minister votes in a certain way. There are certain problems with the TTIP, but virtually all international treaties gives effected legal persons the right to sue governments or use an arbitration court to settle issues when one party violates the treaty and causes financial harm. Note that such law suites / arbitration procedures are only if the treaty provisions are violated. Any other legislative act that causes financial harm is not subject to such court proceedings.
I live in Europe and I can tell you without a doubt that the Commission is most certainly not directly democratically elected And the president was not elected by (EU citizen) voters either.
As you can guess from my sig, I do as well. And I can tell you without doubt that there where three major candidates (and some additional ones for other parties) for the commission presidency known before the last EP elections. Juncker (EPP), Schulz (S&D) and Verhofstadt (ALDE). The EPP got most votes in the EP election and hence, Juncker is EC president.
EU citizens did not vote for the Commission or the president or the seven vice presidents. Anything else is not democracy.
They voted for a party who had fielded a candidate for the EC president. Please note that the EC is an executive body, it does not have lawmaking power, that right is reserved for the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers.
If you truly live in Europe you would have noticed our tradition of parliamentary democracy, very few, if any, EU member states elect the executive.
You are touching on something important here, the EP and the Council of Ministers does have the power to demand that the EC make a legislative proposal, in case the EC ignores this without a valid justification (e.g. not in the EUs competencies), they can be dragged before the Court of Justice of the European Union. While it would be good if the EP had the power to write and approve motions directly, the current set up is not that bad. In fact, for the constitutional treaty it was proposed that the EP would get this right, but the demands where dropped as the same right would have been conferred on the Council of Ministers as well, the question is whether we would really have wanted that to happen, perhaps it would have been for the better. This said, the EU has been moving in the direction of giving the EP the right of initiative, so it will happen at some point. Small steps...
Regarding the petitions, indeed, if a petition would be in an area which is a national competency, why should the Commission act on it. There is a thing called subsidiarity. First, the petition should be checked for legality, and secondly whether there is any way it will pass. For example, if the EC are told by member states (the Council) that they will not pass any legislation of the petition, there is no reason to continue.
So the public can make a suggestion and the Commission can ignore them and the Council of Europe can make a suggestion and the Commission are free to ignore them. And if you read quotes of Jean-Claude Juncker you can see he has complete disdain for democracy, when he said that if France votes to reject the EU Constitution then they will just carry on regardless and that is exact
The commission is elected!!!
The commission is directly elected (for the president). Juncker was elected by the voters. Any vote on the EPP was a vote for Juncker.
The rest of the members are indirectly elected by 1. parliamentary votes in the member states that results in a government that propose a commissioner and 2. european parliament elections, as the EP approves the commission as a whole (and also kicks out individual members).
Juncker does not pick the commissioners, he gives the ones proposed by the member state governments and elected by the european parliament a portfolio of tasks.
Does it matter who benefits as the fees have not been raised for the end customer? As for who benefits there are two groups, the end user / customer and the telcos from countries with lower amount of tourisms. The losers are the telcos from tourism dependent countries.
As for the expats, they benefit even with a local contract since they likely call their parents, siblings etc. It is not just the roaming that is hit, but also the rates for calling to other member states.
Some, say 10 years ago, it was very common to read about how people had been provided phone bills of several thousands, and in some cases tens of thousands of euros because they watched youtube without thinking about it when laying on a beach in Spain.
You ask who benefited, well, the people benefits, if any company benefits it is a positive side effect.
>"Cheaper flights: How often do you fly? Moving once across the continent may be usual for the US, it is very, very uncommon in Europe. Who benefits from cheap flights?"
Personally, usually between 1 and 2 times a month for business and personal reasons. It does vary quite a lot between people. In any case, I have lived in four different EU states so far. It is hard to give numbers, but for short stays (say 6 months to a year) you will find that say 10-20 % have tried this out at some point for studies or work, one out of 15-20 persons will at some point live in another state for a longer time. This isn't really US-level numbers where some states have 50% populations born in other states, but it is steadily growing.
This is actually causing problems now in that a large portion of the population in different countries are taxed but not allowed to vote. I.e. in the brexit case, 3 million EU citizens in the UK were directly affected but where only allowed to pay tax but not have a say in the issue, and secondly 1.5-2 million UK citizens outside the UK where not allowed to vote as you are only allowed to vote the first 15 years you live outside the UK. Looking at how close the results where, where these to vote, it would have had been a clear remain.
> "Roaming fees: How many people do you know abroad that abandoning roaming fees would benefit you. Besides, TANSTAAFL, telcos will not simply swallow the losses, so who gets to pay for corporations' benefit from cheaper international calls?"
When regulating roaming, they also reduced the inter network costs, so it does penalise the Spanish telcos which has a lot of tourists, but in general, no one suffers. About 50 % of my contacts live in another EU state and a lot of them travel around, a lot, for personal reasons and business. My wife for example have reduced her EUR 200 per month phone bills to EUR 50 per month.
> "Lasting peace: Mostly a side effect of corporations not wanting nation states meddling with their profits. Yes, it's nice to live in a safe environment, but don't act as if that's actually something they did for the people."
The Union was formed to create a lasting peace by tying together the member states in a mutual commercial dependence. Yes, this is a side effect of it costing too much to start a war inside the EU, but that was the main point of it...
Indeed, there is a story about how the Swedish PM complained about the Welsh wine served during a summit in the UK. The Italian PM then made sure to send over a whole box of Italian wine to the Swedish PM.
Except, no one expects that this will happen. The pound is expected to stay at this level or lower until at least the end of the year.
The commission isn't perfect, but it isn't undemocratic, at least relatively speaking.
Let's do some comparisons:
British PM: appointed by the queen (in practice taking the parliament results into account), cannot be subject to motions of no confidence as being the PM is a royal prerogative. In practice the PM candidates are known during the general election campaign.
Commission president: proposed by the European Council (where all members are directly or indirectly elected, except for the British PM), elected by the directly elected EP. The european parties pick candidates for a commission president and the European Council must pick the one with the most amount of parliamentary support.
British PM: Selects ministers, ministers not subject to parliament vote.
Commission president: Selects commissioners for their portfolios, commissioners are proposed by the member state governments and are subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The whole commission must pass vote in EP to be approved, the EP have defacto powers to get rid of individual commissioners.
The point with this is that the commission is elected directly and indirectly in the same way that the British government is. That is the candidate for the PM/president post is de-facto picked from the one the parties propose.
I have met several imigrants who are highly qualified people and who are not able to get a job. The high jobless rates in some of the groups is to a large extent simply based on racism (some times not intended).
One friend of mine, a guy of Iranian decent was sending out his job applications after graduating. After just getting the hand for 20 graduate level positions (not even an interview), he decided to not write his last name in the application and only used the initial (he was lucky to have a European first name). The result was 3 interviews on 3 applications and he was able to choose from the 3 jobs he was offered.
Unfortunately for the UK, due to the fall of the GBP, it is no longer the 5th largest economy.
Cheaper flights, phasing out of roaming fees, environmental protection,... lasting peace on the continent.
Indeed, nothing useful at all.
In the UK case, as they where the first, the outers could easily dismiss everything as scaremongering, however, as the predictions are pretty much coming true:
- Massive losses in the financial sector
- Scotland will have second referendum
- Northern Ireland may try to have a referendum
- Etc
Further, the EU will not give a good deal in order to make an example of Britain. Other countries will not get any good deals either. The only option the UK has in order to preserve full internal market access is to join the EEA (which includes the free movement provisions).
Thus, the fallout on the UK will be massive in the end as the EU is a lot bigger than the UK.
The point is, the cost for leaving will be massive and it will be clear to anyone who attempts the same thing.