"The Commission is comprised of commissioners nominated by each Member State, and a president nominated by all of them, and each of them have to obtain the approval of the Parliament."
Indeed and this is completely undemocratic, no where in this statement does it say the citizens voted for the Commission or the citizens voted for the president.
You and a lot of people are completely failing to understand what democracy means, it literally means people-power, not leader-power, not minister-power, not quango-power, not corporate-power, not even parliament-power.
The less direct the power is, the less democratic it is.
Voting directly for a law is democratic. Voting regularly for the representatives who chose, write, amend and rescind laws and regulations is borderline democratic. Anything less is not democratic. The EU is very far removed from being democratic, it has all kinds is issues
Where do you think the laws are made? AKA wrong, they make the laws and regulations (a quango making regs for another quango!!). The Commission does not even have to accept the Parliament's amendments or the Council's suggestions. Pretty much the only real power the Parliament has is to reject a law outright, but they can not rescind a law. Unfortunately when they do that the Commission has a tendancy to come straight back with the law just with a new name, or they take the rejected bits and try to stick them in a new law (ACTA, TTIP etc). The reason the Commission repeatedly ignores parliament is because it is not accountable.
"the Council of Minister is indirectly elected" Oxy-moron, you can not indirectly elect someone, you either elect them or you don't. This is the whole problem with the EU is democratic falsehood.
Democracy is only democracy when lawmakers are directly elected. Switzerland is very democratic, UK is just about democratic. EU is not democratic, it is way way too far down the line to be called democratic.
The word Quango is a derogatory term for a reason and the Commission is very much a Quango. Up until the arguments about the EU I've never heard anyone try and suggest that Quangos are democratic.
Key thing is Not accountable* = not democratic, not elected* = not democratic. EU therefore is not democratic. *to/by the EU citizens directly.
"you had the following options:"... You forgot the option where the EU constitution / Lisbon treaty are binned and either we carry on with the Maastricht treaty or we write a completely new one. Or the option where France or the Netherlands leave the EC.
I think that the EU is showing that is is very difficult to get democracy to work on the EU scale, right now it is not working.
What I know from personal experience is that democracy here in the UK does work, the gov't comes up with some hair-brained idea, we all shout at our MPs and the gov't drops the idea.
Look at TTIP and ISDS, they are blatantly lying through their teeth about it, writing it in secret, writing it hand in hand with corporations whilst ignoring everyone else, and ignoring the fact that the citizens of the EU have spent several years now telling them very firmly that they don't want it. The Commission has been blatantly ignoring them and carrying on with it's bad practices.
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.
EU citizens did not vote for the Commission or the president or the seven vice presidents. Anything else is not democracy.
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]
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 exactly what they did. So the EU is not even legitimate, it does not have the backing of the people of Europe.
A system is only democratic is you vote directly for the lawmakers, this doesn't happen with the EU.
The US president does not pick the men and women of the Congress or the Senate and he was voted for by American citizens.
This would be like the biggest party in Congress picking a leader for NAFTA, and then that guy dishes out work to a bunch of people who were not elected to their positions, and then those people run all the countries in NAFTA, overruling the White house from Toronto.
People-power is not working in the EU, that is very much why we just voted to leave in the face of massive amounts of fear-mongering and experts bullshitting us and endless condescending crap. All this from both sides but the remainers were worse IMO, they played some really dirty mind-games, the youth of Britain fell for it hook line and sinker, the older generations didn't. It didn't help that the Brexiters had some racist idiots among them, everybody got tarred with that brush, remainers called everyone racists and xenophobes.
We are not the first to reject the EU, the French rejected the Lisbon Treaty, they were ignored, the same for the Netherlands. Iceland ripped up it's application to join a couple of years back. Only last week Switzerland to the EU to forget it, they overwhelmingly voted not to join.
The commission writes the laws... just like the civil service here.
You want to bullshit, do it to someone else.
The Commission writes the laws that it wants to write, the actual commissioners won't write every word, they will like the UK parliament allow civil servants to do the actual wording especially as the laws will need to be translated carefully into several languages.
MPs write the laws that they want to write. The civil service does not pick what to write, it puts exactly what the elected politicians want into legalese, it's very different.
We do not vote for the Commission that means it's undemocratic, I'm not stupid. We do vote for MPs. Some of those MPs make up the cabinet.
If I can't vote the Commission out then it's not democratic. You can say it's democratic as many times as you like, it won't make it true.
Democracy has a very fine line, as soon as you separate the people you vote for and the people who make the laws it cease to be democratic. The commission is not democratic because it is not accountable to the voters. To be democratic they have to fear losing their jobs when the electorate aren't happy with what they're doing, this is not the case with the EU Commission.
You're a fucking moron, the MEPs don't hold the power in Europe, The Commission decides the laws and regulations and it writes them.
The council doesn't do much at all, the Commission does all the work, the council does not represent Voters, the president does not represent voters, the Commission does not represent voters, THAT MEANS the system is NOT DEMOCRATIC.
You and a lot of other people really need to understand what democracy is, democracy is a system where you can vote DIRECTLY and it MUST be directly for the people who make the laws, anything else is not democracy.
A billion pounds doesn't buy much property in the UK.
5 million people entering the country increasing the population by nearly 10% into an already crowded country whilst the govt doesn't build any houses has had a very huge impact on housing supply and demand, well demand at least.
So, sure some rich Chinese have bought property in the UK, rich people from all over the world have bought property in the UK and I don't like the way they treat are homes as their investment toys but that is nothing in comparison to having millions of extra people suddenly enter one of the worlds most densely populated countries.
Do the math, how much does it cost to house 5 million people when the average house price is GBP273,000.
The commission is unelected that makes it undemocratic.
You come up with all kinds of funny excuses but if we don't elect the commission then it is not democratic.
The Commission is a quango, quangos are we can all agree not democratic bodies. You can't say X, Y or Z picked the Commission therefore it is democratic if X, y or Z are not the EU citizens.
Jean-Claude Juncker is the EU president, he picks the Commissioners, we did not vote for him.
Ironically the remainers don't understand that this would have been our only democratic vote, the EU Commission is a quango.
And fools keep trying to tell me that Europe run by a Quango is democratic. FML.
Thursday was a victory for democracy, it's a shame that most of the voters on both sides were pretty clueless about what they were actually voting for or against beyond the letters EU.
Democracy is system where you vote DIRECTLY for the people making the laws. Note the word directly, if it's not direct then it's not democracy.
The EU is like voting for the guy down the road who then picks his mate to runs the show and then his mate picks a bunch of other people to run it with him.
That is not democracy, have you got any other stupid rubbish you want to hit me with?
Unelected bureaucrats running and EU army was one of the reasons why I voted out. These same Bureaucrats have been shit-stirring with Russia, upping the tensions.
It does indeed 'violate the idea of govt by consent' and in a roundabout way that is why we left, uncontrolled massive immigration has caused house prices to rocket whilst wages dropped down to minimum wage. We were told over and over again we could do nothing about this because it is mandated by the EU. And then they let us vote on the EU!!! Ha ha, stupid fucks.
The power in the EU is in the Commission, this unelected body (Quango) chooses the laws and regulations and writes them. It badly needs to change and become democratic.
I've had huge amounts of BS thrown at me by 'remainers' trying to claim the the Commission is democratic, the word democracy has never been abused so badly.
How comes a person who can afford a 'model s' can't afford a new mobile phone? Any half decent phone on the market for the last 4 years can record at 730p or 1080p.
It's no different from any other business, there's no reason why they should have a significantly large sum to invest with your run of the mill car insurance business.
Except in this case the person is a multi-billion dollar company.
In the UK if you can show you have a couple of million £ spare then you don't have to get car insurance because you would be able to pay out yourself in the event of an accident.
Absolutely, I think all to often we don't like to give credit to ancient civilisations where credit is due. Mythbusters often epitomizes this with the 'if we can't do it then there's no way that they could of' kind of attitude, forgetting that old civilisations often had techniques/methods that have long since been forgotten and those civilisations had decades to perfect their devices and knowledge.
I find it awe-inspiring that they made this device so early, it's a heck of a lot more sophisticated than a few sticks with beads on.
I have that,(classic theme..) not causing probs for me, possibly a setting. Talking of improving youtube, they havent, it can take 5-10 seconds for the interface to respond to clicks for me, might be ghostery or noscript though.
Slashdot Mirror
The council presidency is largely irrelevant.
"The Commission is comprised of commissioners nominated by each Member State, and a president nominated by all of them, and each of them have to obtain the approval of the Parliament."
Indeed and this is completely undemocratic, no where in this statement does it say the citizens voted for the Commission or the citizens voted for the president.
You and a lot of people are completely failing to understand what democracy means, it literally means people-power, not leader-power, not minister-power, not quango-power, not corporate-power, not even parliament-power.
The less direct the power is, the less democratic it is.
Voting directly for a law is democratic.
Voting regularly for the representatives who chose, write, amend and rescind laws and regulations is borderline democratic.
Anything less is not democratic. The EU is very far removed from being democratic, it has all kinds is issues
"the Commission does not have lawmaking powers."
Where do you think the laws are made? AKA wrong, they make the laws and regulations (a quango making regs for another quango!!). The Commission does not even have to accept the Parliament's amendments or the Council's suggestions. Pretty much the only real power the Parliament has is to reject a law outright, but they can not rescind a law. Unfortunately when they do that the Commission has a tendancy to come straight back with the law just with a new name, or they take the rejected bits and try to stick them in a new law (ACTA, TTIP etc). The reason the Commission repeatedly ignores parliament is because it is not accountable.
"the Council of Minister is indirectly elected" Oxy-moron, you can not indirectly elect someone, you either elect them or you don't. This is the whole problem with the EU is democratic falsehood.
Democracy is only democracy when lawmakers are directly elected. Switzerland is very democratic, UK is just about democratic. EU is not democratic, it is way way too far down the line to be called democratic.
The word Quango is a derogatory term for a reason and the Commission is very much a Quango. Up until the arguments about the EU I've never heard anyone try and suggest that Quangos are democratic.
Key thing is Not accountable* = not democratic, not elected* = not democratic. EU therefore is not democratic.
*to/by the EU citizens directly.
"you had the following options:"...
You forgot the option where the EU constitution / Lisbon treaty are binned and either we carry on with the Maastricht treaty or we write a completely new one.
Or the option where France or the Netherlands leave the EC.
I think that the EU is showing that is is very difficult to get democracy to work on the EU scale, right now it is not working.
What I know from personal experience is that democracy here in the UK does work, the gov't comes up with some hair-brained idea, we all shout at our MPs and the gov't drops the idea.
Look at TTIP and ISDS, they are blatantly lying through their teeth about it, writing it in secret, writing it hand in hand with corporations whilst ignoring everyone else, and ignoring the fact that the citizens of the EU have spent several years now
telling them very firmly that they don't want it. The Commission has been blatantly ignoring them and carrying on with it's bad practices.
ISDS is insane, but that's another story.
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.
EU citizens did not vote for the Commission or the president or the seven vice presidents. Anything else is not democracy.
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 exactly what they did. So the EU is not even legitimate, it does not have the backing of the people of Europe.
A system is only democratic is you vote directly for the lawmakers, this doesn't happen with the EU.
The US president does not pick the men and women of the Congress or the Senate and he was voted for by American citizens.
This would be like the biggest party in Congress picking a leader for NAFTA, and then that guy dishes out work to a bunch of people who were not elected to their positions, and then those people run all the countries in NAFTA, overruling the White house from Toronto.
Democracy, means People-power
late 16th century: from French démocratie, via late Latin from Greek dÄ"mokratia, from dÄ"mos âthe peopleâ(TM) + -kratia âpower, ruleâ(TM).
People-power is not working in the EU, that is very much why we just voted to leave in the face of massive amounts of fear-mongering and experts bullshitting us and endless condescending crap. All this from both sides but the remainers were worse IMO, they played some really dirty mind-games, the youth of Britain fell for it hook line and sinker, the older generations didn't. It didn't help that the Brexiters had some racist idiots among them, everybody got tarred with that brush, remainers called everyone racists and xenophobes.
We are not the first to reject the EU, the French rejected the Lisbon Treaty, they were ignored, the same for the Netherlands. Iceland ripped up it's application to join a couple of years back. Only last week Switzerland to the EU to forget it, they overwhelmingly voted not to join.
You want to bullshit, do it to someone else.
The Commission writes the laws that it wants to write, the actual commissioners won't write every word, they will like the UK parliament allow civil servants to do the actual wording especially as the laws will need to be translated carefully into several languages.
MPs write the laws that they want to write. The civil service does not pick what to write, it puts exactly what the elected politicians want into legalese, it's very different.
We do not vote for the Commission that means it's undemocratic, I'm not stupid. We do vote for MPs. Some of those MPs make up the cabinet.
If I can't vote the Commission out then it's not democratic. You can say it's democratic as many times as you like, it won't make it true.
Democracy has a very fine line, as soon as you separate the people you vote for and the people who make the laws it cease to be democratic. The commission is not democratic because it is not accountable to the voters. To be democratic they have to fear losing their jobs when the electorate aren't happy with what they're doing, this is not the case with the EU Commission.
If you want to be rude then fair enough.
You're a fucking moron, the MEPs don't hold the power in Europe, The Commission decides the laws and regulations and it writes them.
The council doesn't do much at all, the Commission does all the work, the council does not represent Voters, the president does not represent voters, the Commission does not represent voters, THAT MEANS the system is NOT DEMOCRATIC.
You and a lot of other people really need to understand what democracy is, democracy is a system where you can vote DIRECTLY and it MUST be directly for the people who make the laws, anything else is not democracy.
Quango, look it up.
A billion pounds doesn't buy much property in the UK.
5 million people entering the country increasing the population by nearly 10% into an already crowded country whilst the govt doesn't build any houses has had a very huge impact on housing supply and demand, well demand at least.
So, sure some rich Chinese have bought property in the UK, rich people from all over the world have bought property in the UK and I don't like the way they treat are homes as their investment toys but that is nothing in comparison to having millions of extra people suddenly enter one of the worlds most densely populated countries.
Do the math, how much does it cost to house 5 million people when the average house price is GBP273,000.
The commission is unelected that makes it undemocratic.
You come up with all kinds of funny excuses but if we don't elect the commission then it is not democratic.
The Commission is a quango, quangos are we can all agree not democratic bodies. You can't say X, Y or Z picked the Commission therefore it is democratic if X, y or Z are not the EU citizens.
Jean-Claude Juncker is the EU president, he picks the Commissioners, we did not vote for him.
You should read some of the things he has said, he shows complete disdain for democracy:
Jean-Claude Juncker - Wikiquote
Ironically the remainers don't understand that this would have been our only democratic vote, the EU Commission is a quango.
And fools keep trying to tell me that Europe run by a Quango is democratic. FML.
Thursday was a victory for democracy, it's a shame that most of the voters on both sides were pretty clueless about what they were actually voting for or against beyond the letters EU.
Knowing the difference between male and female would probable be even harder for a computer than the actual experiment.
Democracy is system where you vote DIRECTLY for the people making the laws. Note the word directly, if it's not direct then it's not democracy.
The EU is like voting for the guy down the road who then picks his mate to runs the show and then his mate picks a bunch of other people to run it with him.
That is not democracy, have you got any other stupid rubbish you want to hit me with?
The Commission is a Quango, look it up.
Unelected bureaucrats running and EU army was one of the reasons why I voted out. These same Bureaucrats have been shit-stirring with Russia, upping the tensions.
It does indeed 'violate the idea of govt by consent' and in a roundabout way that is why we left, uncontrolled massive immigration has caused house prices to rocket whilst wages dropped down to minimum wage. We were told over and over again we could do nothing about this because it is mandated by the EU. And then they let us vote on the EU!!! Ha ha, stupid fucks.
BBC: No other slathdot story over last 24 hrs begings with the news channel picked.
BBC: so why is this story prefaced with BBC:
BBC: ?
The power in the EU is in the Commission, this unelected body (Quango) chooses the laws and regulations and writes them. It badly needs to change and become democratic.
I've had huge amounts of BS thrown at me by 'remainers' trying to claim the the Commission is democratic, the word democracy has never been abused so badly.
How comes a person who can afford a 'model s' can't afford a new mobile phone? Any half decent phone on the market for the last 4 years can record at 730p or 1080p.
And there's the fact that they allowed millions of attacks before shutting off the service (if they had the sense to actually shut it off).
It's no different from any other business, there's no reason why they should have a significantly large sum to invest with your run of the mill car insurance business.
If a self-driving car deliberately runs over somebody then stick it in a big parking lot for 25 years!
As more self-driving cars hit the roads non-self-driving car insurance will also decline, less likelyhood of a crash with a self-driving car.
That may be true for insuring against $billion scenarios but I don't see how that applies to car insurance.
Except in this case the person is a multi-billion dollar company.
In the UK if you can show you have a couple of million £ spare then you don't have to get car insurance because you would be able to pay out yourself in the event of an accident.
Once a week it would give out the correct lottery numbers and the device owner would collect his winnings.
Absolutely, I think all to often we don't like to give credit to ancient civilisations where credit is due. Mythbusters often epitomizes this with the 'if we can't do it then there's no way that they could of' kind of attitude, forgetting that old civilisations often had techniques/methods that have long since been forgotten and those civilisations had decades to perfect their devices and knowledge.
I find it awe-inspiring that they made this device so early, it's a heck of a lot more sophisticated than a few sticks with beads on.
I have that,(classic theme..) not causing probs for me, possibly a setting. Talking of improving youtube, they havent, it can take 5-10 seconds for the interface to respond to clicks for me, might be ghostery or noscript though.
It's working for me, perhaps a plugin conflict