To me this whole TTIP feels like the US trying to bundle and export their most profitable corporate lobbying results through the corrupt and payed-for US politicians to the EU. Secret negotiations, state-investor dispute, all of this seems organized to help big corporations screw consumers further.
I simply hope the whole thing fails, I really don't see the benefit to me.
I'm sure the EU corporations are doing their share of lobbying, but I agree that all these trade agreements seem to be tailored for Big Business at the expense of consumers.
This is a completely different level than lobbying, this is effectively corporative control.
You enforce labeling of "inconvenient" ingredients on food? That hurts Mamacorp, you're going to be sued.
You ban pesticides? Mamacorp is going to sue you.
You prevent smoking? Mamacorp is going to sue you.
You block eternal copyright? Well, you got the rap.
The thing I find terrifying is that virtually any form of social progress can be interpreted as damage to some company's profit.
The end result would be corporate control, but the existence of the draft agreement is a result of lobbying. That said, I agree with you that it is an extremely scary prospect.
Plus, we're producers too. Corporations try to make us feel grateful to be allowed to be producers, lest we stay depressed at home as unemployed. Not to mention defining out of existence all the uncompensated labor people do...
(And of course, they have their thumb on the macroeconomic scales which result in this curious phenomenon of "unemployment". Pretty sick, irrational societies.)
In the current monetary system that is unfortunately true.
Note that I am not blaming "capitalism" but the current monetary system (that is based on debt). Consumption is necessary for most countries in the world right now to keep them going, as soon consumption stops, the countries fail.
(also you can get into stagflations, that are terrible: ever-increasing prices, including food and rent, while income an jobs are declining, this is happening right now in Brazil... 5 days ago I went to buy cheese, and it is 3 times the price of 5 years ago! And I am unemployed, as is all people that went to college with me 5 years ago!)
The key point is the way in which a treaty like this puts a whole class of what would once have been domestic legislation beyond the reach of democratic decision-making. Both in the treaties themselves, and their transnational private courts.
Largely through ignorance, incompetence and inaction, the US has allowed its elected government to be bought (at embarrassingly low prices, I might add) by corporate interests and persuaded/bribed to work for the interests of corporations and against the interests of its own citizens.
At the point where this thoroughly corrupt government and its awesome military and economic clout are used to push the interests of corporations on other countries and their citizens, the US is clearly stepping into "bad guy" territory. Be clear about this: the US is using its economic clout (and threats of using it) to coerce other countries to bulldoze the legal provisions that help safeguard their citizens. How much higher than this would you set the bar for "bad guy" behavior??
Can't a democratic decision be made to get out of the treaty? Also - international obligations in general, by their nature, restrict democratic or any other kind of sovereign decision-making. Decisions such as waging war, defaulting on debt, etc. which are often made by sovereigns illustrate that restrictions on sovereigns aren't necessarily bad.
(Not saying that TTIP is a good thing, just that I'm a bit baffled by the framing of the problems with it as a conflict between democracy and corporations or such. I'm even more baffled by the framing of defaulting on sovereign debt as a "democratic right" - again, regardless of the fact that a country's citizens might have gotten a raw deal because a corrupt government issued debt it shouldn't have, say, because it was bribed and needed liquidity to buy something useless/overpriced from whoever bribed it, etc.)
That is an extremely limited form of democracy, to only be able to decide on a huge swathe of legislation with just a yes or a no. And on top of that, when something like this is tied in with the trade deals, it would be impossible to reverse it because of the potential for an economic shock and destabilization of the financial system.
If a government came in that wanted to shift the balance - for instance on this issue, of human health, quality of life, and the environment on the one hand, and agricultural productivity on the other - previously they would be able to change the law. Under TTIP, they have to renege on the trade deals covering, what, a third of the economy. That is to all practical purposes impossible. You might as well have written the law into the constitution.
That doesn't mean I'm against all international treaties, but usually those cover issues which are inherently international. TTIP represents the movement of large swathes of what would once have been domestic legislation into international treaties, and the mechanisms which would have been appropriate for, say, an international convention on cross-border child abduction, are not appropriate for deciding whether or not a country is allowed to ban activities which are dangerous to the health of its citizens, within its own borders.
The lack of a sensible bankruptcy procedure for countries is a serious problem. Individuals can discharge debts in bankruptcy in order to get back on their feet. Companies have at least two different kinds of bankruptcy depending on whether they can be run as a going concern or not. But a FX-denominated debt is potentially an anchor on your country forever. Look at the Argentine "pari passu" fiasco for example.
Imposing an unpayable debt on a country that forces poverty on its citizens has a real and serious cost in human life. Wars have been fought over this; it's often argued that the reparations debt imposed on Germany after WW1 was a contributing factor to WW2.
I'm not saying I know what to do about unpayable sovereign debt, just that defaulting on such debt is not a sensible example of a democratic right. "We had a referendum and decided that you can all wipe your asses with our bonds" is probably not the "sensible bankruptcy procedure" that you mention. I did not claim anything beyond that.
Why do I think my point was worth making? Because there's a huge amount of issues boiling down to poor coordination between different states today, the nature of today's economy ensures this will become increasingly common, and I think it's worth pointing out that simply insisting on "democratic rights" interpreted as "doing whatever the citizens want, the rest of the world be damned" doesn't really cut it. And this "interference with democracy" theme is really really common these days, I bump into this sort of phrasing every other week.
I agree countries should have some sort of bankruptcy protection. I thought the UN could could invoke the protections of bankruptcy in certain instances?
As to individuals in the U.S. we have two, or three types of bankruptcy protection, and that goes for individuals--not just companies.
I do think we need to keep a close eye on Bankruptcy laws in the United States. I have a feeling if a Rebublican is elected in 2016, federal statutes on bankruptcy laws will be changed, like under the George Bush's rein.
The problems we have with our current bankruptcy statues, right now, is this: The homeowners exemption is too low in most states.(Your primary residence should be exempt from creditors in bankruptcy court--period, especially for unsecured debt! Student loans should be partially dismissable. (I would rather have the government just deny certain collages access to the student loan program, but they aren't moving fast enough.) Those are my biggest gripes with U.S. Bankruptcy laws. If you don't have the money, have nerves of steel, and the ability to internalize Nolo Press's publications on bankruptcy; you can do your own bankruptcy.
Keep in mind you can only do most bankruptcies every 10 years, so use them wisely. I need to do a chapter 7, but am holding off until I start making real money, or a republican is elected in 2016.
(As to credit collectors, keep track of every unauthorized call(keep a diary, or tape the conversations); if you are lucky the weasels will break federal laws, and you might be able to sue? I'm my case, different collection agencies must have called my residence over at least over a 1000 times over the years. I really despise the collection game, along with process servers. These judgements are sold, on most cases for pennies on the dollar. I have thought about buying my own judgement debt. If anyone in the Debt Collection industry reads this--have you heard of anyone successfully buying their own debt? I have found no laws prohibiting it.)
Why not? What other country goes around bombing civilians and pushing war on every front just in order to get resources in the name of 'democracy'.
The whole US law and political process is very corrupt from the view of an european citizen.
To tell the truth, I really hate the way US acts as if they're not the bad guys. US is the bad guys. I really hope somebody would do something about this, and ultimately this lies in the hands of US citizens to make a change.
I am also very concerned about this TTIP -agreement. They are already doing things in Finland in order to sell our water to companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi (sugar-caffeine drug peddlers). This really makes me mad that with money politicians can be bought, and laws can be reformed to fit those of big huge companies who only think about making a profit in the name of destroying our nature, people, animals and other living forms.
Actually, what I wanna say is: F*CK USA. The whole system is based around killing others and taking their resources. Native Americans know this very well, and US citizens don't seem to even realize that they live there only because the previous inhabitants were killed or driven away from their lands with agreements that were false to begin with.
I imagine that might be found unconstitutional? I haven't heard anyone speak (intelligently) about whether this sort of business > government in terms of the Constitution. Is it true that democratic power can be signed away in an international treaty?
My understanding of the Constitution on this matter is that all international treaties and agreements must be considered very high law, but may not invalide or contradict any part of the constitution themselves lest the particular section or whole agreement be considered void and nonbinding. That was my ametuer reading of the section on that.
Also, regarding TTIP and TTP, I think we have to admit NAFTA was in the same vein but we allowed it to pass. The problem here though is we are putting what thin thread of sinewy national sovereignty we have up for grabs. Nader in the 92 debates was right (which is also consequently why the two parties jointly bought out the debate organization to keep other Naders out of the pucture.)
Is there even a sharp divide between EU and US corporations anymore? I get the impression that the really large ones operate in both, and those tend to be the ones that will profit most from such an agreement.
You should read George Orwell's piece "What is Fascism?" [1]. It's a short essay worth the read before you're tempted to point the finger and call someone or something fascist.
I think we all have experience of fascism. It's not a magic thing; currently it's (unfortunately) a very common mode of human organization.
"Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward." — http://www.spunk.org/texts/quotes/sp000096.txt
(I am not trying to make a pedantic point about who is/isn't acting fascist. Just wanting to say we've very much internalized ideologies which we use as epithets.)
Treaties are always negotiated in secret? I'd expect at least the decision makers to be in the information loop. I'm not sure that's really the case. Isn't it unusual that (as I've been hearing) even the Congressfolk who are expected to vote on this contract are unable to obtain preliminary copies of the in-progress document other than through WikiLeaks?
The EU constitution would have been an entirely different thing. It would have made the EU a lot more democratic, adding a directly elected president, for instance.
The EU now has a directly elected President in all but name, through the Spitzenkandidaten system. Legally, its supposed to be a joint decision of the Council and the Parliament, but when Cameron tried to object to Juncker, it seemed to be pretty clear that the new expectation is that the Council rubber-stamps Parliament's decision, and Parliament will support the party receiving the largest number of votes.
A president elected by the parliament used to be a pretty common thing in many European countries. It's simply a different model. Keep in mind that in virtually all European countries, the office of the president is not particularly powerful. The government/parliament combo is where the power is - the president is in many countries little more than a guy/gal opening new motorways and representing the country at international summits (but foreign policy is crafted by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs equivalent).
The "election by parliament" model has been/is now being phased out in favor of direct presidential elections in many countries, but let's not pretend like we're dealing with something particularly unusual here.
You can go vote and write in 'Lady Gaga' or something. The important part is that you getup and go "vote", to signal that you care.
Otherwise, politicians won't be able to tell whether you are dissatisfied or just uninterested. If you are explicitly dissatisfied, they might try to do something to get your vote. Hopefully by enacting good policy.
I'm not an expert on these issues, but I haved heard mention of the Singapore treaty and that it already provides investment protection. Can anyone explain why these protections are deemed no longer suitable?
Pop quiz: who says the text of the TPP must remain secret? Under what authority? Members of Congress are scuttling around like weasels, claiming they can’t disclose what’s in this far-reaching, 12-nation trade treaty. They can go into a sealed room and read a draft, but they can’t copy pages, and they can’t tell the public what they just read.
Why not? If there is a US law forbidding disclosure, name the law. Can you recall anything in the Constitution that establishes secret treaties? Is there a prior treaty that states the text of all treaties can be hidden from the people? I see no authority anywhere that justifies withholding the text of the TPP. --WORLD AFFAIRS BRIEF
If the EU exists with it's current form in 5 years, we can re-discuss the TTIP, but generally speaking I think it will not matter what the 'EU' agreement was, if the EU gets dissolved ... and from where it appears like if they're trying really hard to dissolve it (even if the state otherwise).
There's both there's an anti EU trend but don't mistake this to think there is no-one for it. There are lots of good things they've done. The whole 'euro' currency thing that gets the attention is just a small part of the system.
"[T]the health costs of EDCs to Europe are between £113 billion and £195 billion (between €160 and €277 billion) every year."
There is no mention that pesticides/herbicides are a very small percentage of that number. It doesn't matter whether it's "still bad" that it's a small percentage. Arstechnica willingly led me to believe that the impact of pesticides/herbicides was in the hundreds of billions of Euros.
These numbers also, notably, came out long after the 2013 negotiations mentioned. What was the scientific consensus on EDCs in 2013?
Further down the article there's an indirect reference:
“I would recommend that pregnant women and children eat organic fruits and vegetables and avoid using plastic containers and canned food, especially in the microwave, because containers are usually treated on the inside with substances and compounds that can leak into the tomato soup and may act as endocrine disruptors,” he said.
So,you think it's only the money or cost that matters? How about the fact that this means that pesticides will contain more harmful ingredients and might destroy parts of the agriculture? Oh yeah, but you can't really see immediate dollar results from that.
While I'm against the TTIP, the "the health costs of EDCs to Europe are between £113 billion and £195 billion" mentioned in the Ars article seems to be from the Guaridan article "(£113bn-£195bn)" http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/06/health-co...
that says "Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the human hormone system, and can be found in food containers, plastics, furniture, toys, carpeting and cosmetics."
no mention of pesticides in their opening bit. I'm guessing the percentage exposure coming from pesticides is very small so the financial figures in the Ars article are misleading.
How can you seriously defend the EU to the average European when you see things like this ? This kind of stories are not going to help to reduce the current distrust of everything related to the European union. All this corruption really does a disservice to the EU.
Honestly? Because my first thought was "there's no way the EU signed off on this". I challenge anyone to find a stauncher protector of consumer rights in history than the EU...
This is the strange thing about the EU, it is almost as barmy as the BBC but like them somehow largely manages to do the right thing. It's amazing that most of our politicians believe with a kind of religious faith that big business and the free market is the solution when it seems fairly clear the psychopathic behaviour and the free market has bankrupted government and ruined the economy. Instead of saying let's put in further more stringent regulations the neocons have got more of their policies through. I think this is largely due to an obedient and corporate controlled media.
That is because they have very limited area that they can regulate, so consumer protection laws are essentially their playing field. For more serious topics they have to ask Merkel & Hollande.
The purpose of the EU is not to be perfect. It's to link the countries via economy and culture so tightly that going to war every 30 years is unthinkable.
And yet this is based on an untested assumption that political union is the only way to avoid this.
Furthermore, you could argue that the EU contributed to the triggering of a new Cold War (hot in the Ukraine) by staging a coup of a democratically elected government.
Or at the very least having unelected foreign policy actors (Ashton et al) take ham-fisted actions on behalf of a whole continent.
...or that it has contributed to untold sufferring of an entire generation in the Mediterranean countries due to an ill-conceived currency union.
Given said negative externalities, might it be worth re-visting the premise of the whole endeavour?
> And yet this is based on an untested assumption that political union is the only way to avoid this.
Well, yes it is. This is an assumption that is costly to test, as they say. In this region in particular, it war seemed to be happening a lot, so some people really went overboard in trying to prevent it, and with the benefit of hindsight, you wonder if it could have been done at less cost. Maybe, maybe not.
Could you please elaborate on the corruption point, because I don't see anything about that in the article and have actually not heard about corruption in the European Union for a long time.
I guess he refers to the heavy lobbying that going on in the EU that goes as far as laws written by corporations are presented to members of the parliament and other similar unhealthy looking issues.
I'm a citizen of Germany (and consider myself to be Eu-Citizen as well) and I'm in favor of a trade agreement. Of course you have to debate about certain points but I would personally live in the US or in Europe and would e.G. accept both food regulations. I think there are many people in the US and in Europe with a similar mindset.
My concern is that regulation can not advance because it would brake the treaty by losing the unification of standards.
The EU can not agree with Washington either, because it is not responsible in most cases. My understanding is, that the EU and the US are organized in the direct opposite way: In the US, Washington is responsible for the military and so on while every state has its own laws for protecting the environment or license plates and stuff like this. The EU tries to agree on standards for these things and has very limited rights in topics like foreign policies.
And I would hate to lose in a secret court against Phillip Morris.
That's (sadly) (possibly) not true. I thought it would be scandalous if Europeans didn't want TTIP and they just ignored the people and continued negotiating. But then I found this chart [1] and in almost every country the majority is for a trade agreement. I don't know if the numbers are wrong, if people are uninformed or if they just don't care, but if the numbers are correct then it all is just democratic, the majority wins, whether I or you like it or not.
Those survey results show people who are "for a free trade and investment agreement between the EU and the USA" -- not those who are for this trade agreement; the objections to TTIP are arguably not about the freedom of trade and investment.
Exactly. How am I supposed to say whether I like it or not when I don't know what "it" is? Lets leave surprises for company pot luck lunches.
Would any elected official dare ask the same about the legislative process? Isn't a trade agreement that sets precedent as legislation the opposite of a participatory democracy? It just makes no sense. How can they have things like TPP and TTIP and still complain about the lack of involvement in politics by ordinary folks?
They support a free trade agreement, it doesn't specifically tells about TTIP that may not be a free trade agreement since anyway almost nobody knows what's in it.
but perhaps they need to develop new production methods to avoid the use of pesticides, otherwise, there might not be enough food for everybody? try to grow a garden if you haven't yet
Parliamentary democracies are often deeply flawed and in need of reform. That much is obvious (in the UK at any rate).
The problem with the EU is that is is even less democratic and hence less accountable than the pre-existing system of national governments.
Furthermore, as this article shows, the EU makes it easier for large companies and trading blocks to pull-off greater subversions and abuses of power via lobbying and corruption, since power is concentrated in a much smaller number of people.
The founders and implementors of the EU "project" used the term "ever tighter integration" in their founding documents, where they laid out their vision for a United States of Europe.
They even describe how they intended to implement this via a technique called "gradualism". The idea being that big sweeping reforms would be rejected by the individual polities, but that more gradual, subtle changes spread over time could achieve the same effect without the same resitance. And we have seen this in action over the past forty years.
A bit like the apochryphal boiling of a frog.
The problem is that this is in some sense subversive and in another, presumptious that the EU project is desired and/or sensible. At some point the frog metaphor breaks down and people begin to realize what is happening and what has happened.
And in the UK at least, finally, we are beginning to see a debate being held on the desirability of the EU being a political union (rather than the more prosaic free-trade area).
All democratic republics are in dire need of an overhaul for the 21st century. However, US and UK tend to be worse than many because of the first past the post voting system.
I feel bad for the voters in the UK. LD got trounced in this election but in the previous two elections they had 22 and 23 percentage of votes.
In 2010, Conservatives had 47% of the seats with 36 percent of votes. Labor had almost 40% with 29% of the votes. LD had 8% with 23% of votes. Even in 2015, they had 1.2% of seats with 7.9% of votes.
If you have almost a quarter of the population voting for you, you'd think you can make things happen. What went wrong with the referendum? What could the YES proponents have done differently? More importantly, has the damage been done? How long do UK nationals have to be quiet about alternative voting now?
It is my understanding that AV was a horrible compromise, desired by no-one (even the smaller parties).
Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats was king-maker and part of the coalition (deputy PM) in the last government. With a smaller party in power, this was seen as a crucial opportunity for electoral reform.
Ultimately, Clegg blew it - and I don't think this is an exaggeration.
What we are left with is the SNP needing 26,000 votes per seat in the Commons, and UKIP needing 3.9 million votes per seat. Only 30 million votes were cast in total!
This can be said to be deeply undemocratic, regardless of your political persuasion.
What could the YES proponents have done differently?
The LDs not only got the compromise proposal rather than a properly proportional one, but failed to secure an agreement that their coalition partners wouldn't campaign against it. With the two largest parties and most of the press against it, it was always going to be a No.
If you want voting reform, you absolutely must convince the Labour party to support it. It would be nice to get some positive press too, but the press are basically a free-floating rightwing attack faction of their own.
Maybe the example of Scotland's non-proportional result could be used to convince Labour.
I am very convinced that a full proportional representation would be very much better than the status quo. Can we have a referendum again? When would be an optimal time?
``EU plans to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals found in pesticides have been dropped because of threats from the US that this would adversely affect negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)''
They shouldn't drop them, we should regulate freely and be removed from TTIP. Being involved in TTIP isn't a privilege or in any way desirable, it's an undemocratic exercise in futility. So, to me, being ejected is a win-win scenario.
The problem about "TTIP" and "free trade treaties" is, that they are continuously used to support the interests of big corporations -- and thus, lowering health, environmental and other standards is one of the big targets of those treaties.
I lately saw a documentation about the trade treaty of the US with Mexico. They said, that standards where lowered in both countries.
Take two or more countries and make today a "free trade treaty" between them, you get the lowest common denominator, since the big corporations are at the head of the table.
TTIP starts to reduce standards even before it is signed.
Collectively the EU bloc represents the larges global economy (18tr GDP). It should be the US forced to accept EU regulations to participate in the EU economy, not the other way around.
The US economy is about $1.8 trillion larger than the EU economy presently.
The EU economy is roughly $15.7 trillion (€14.3 trillion), and hasn't grown in seven years. During that time, the US retook the lead in size and added around ~$2.5 trillion to its GDP. The dollar run in the prior year has also lifted the value of the US economy at the expense of the EU economy, by about ~13%.
> EU regulations would have banned 31 pesticides containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that have been linked to testicular cancer and male infertility.
Obvious criticism of sweeping trade treaties aside, this is another blatant case where the health and well-being of males takes a back seat to political considerations.
I'll bet my bottom dollar that if these chemicals caused, say, ovarian cancer, Governments on both sides of the Atlantic would be racing to ban them and get political brownie points.
Just after the official launch of the TTIP negotiations on 13 June 2013, a US business delegation visited EU officials to demand that the proposed regulations governing EDCs should be thrown out in favour of a further "impact study."
May I please know the names of those scumbags, or at least how can I find out? I want to know more about those brainacs, perhaps place a few phonecalls, express my disgust.
In general, the way the EU works is that the European Commission have the right to start all legislation. Then, in order for the legislation to pass, it has to be approved by the European Parliament (which is directly elected) and the European Council (representatives of the national governments).
What has happened here is the European Commission have scrapped legislation that was working its way through its internal mechanisms, before it was formally proposed and handed off to the Parliament.
The Commission holds enormous power, and has traditionally has been an apolitical civil service, but recently there has been a movement towards its leader being elected by the Parliament. But this has only happened a handful of times, and the President of the Commission has never been removed from his position by the Parliament. I'm not even sure if such a procedure exists.
> But this has only happened a handful of times, and the President of the Commission has never been removed from his position by the Parliament. I'm not even sure if such a procedure exists.
If the Santer Commission hadn't resigned, the Parliament was going to force them to.
Neither are Merkel, Cameron, Tsipras and probably about 50% of the heads of government. I doubt there is a country where the Secretary of Defense is elected.
There's nothing wrong with an elected parliament choosing the executive, and the EU actually moved to a more direct election with the 'Spitzenkandidat' system. People still didn't care to vote for the EU parliament.
Your comment re Merkel, Cameron et al is a strawman: just because the existing system of parliamentary democracy is deeply flawed, it does not follow that another even less democratic system is acceptable.
You point out that Cameron (for example) is not directly elected as PM. He does however have to be elected to parliament via a democratic vote. Unlike the European Commission, where commissioners have no democratic mandate to speak of and yet they hold immense power.
34% of those eligible voted in the UK European elections (i.e. for the European Parliament). Your comment re people not caring is overly simplistic. People will not vote for a wide variety of reasons. Only one of which is that they "don't care".
Edit: please explain your downvote, so that I may improve my comment or respond.
The European Commission is proposed by the (elected) heads of governments and then approved via a democratic vote by the (directly elected) members of the European Parliament. I'd call that a strong democratic mandate.
The European Parliament has the power to reject Commissions they don't see fit and did so in the past.
That's even more power to the members of parliament than in most member states where the head of government can freely appoint ministers without approval of the parliament.
>He does however have to be elected to parliament via a democratic vote. Unlike the European Commission, where commissioners have no democratic mandate to speak of and yet they hold immense power.
You are incorrect. Since the Lisbon treaty at least, the commission is proposed by the council and then has to be voted on by the parliament.
If anything that gives it even more democratic legitimacy than Cameron, as in his case only he himself, not his cabinet is voted on by parliament.
You are of course within your right to criticize the parliamentary democratic system within it self. However a claim that the processes by which the commission is put in place are less democratic than the processes by which Cameron or Merkel came to power are just outright false.
The democratic mandate for EU commissioners is less strong than for directly elected officials.
@matt4077 called out that even Cameron is not elected directly as PM, and that is correct. The problems with the existing parliamentary democracy in the UK are well understood.
So having a "somewhat undemocratically elected official" Cameron, nominate a person for the commission who has not been directly elected at all by the populous, is less democratic because it is one step further removed from direct election.
This is how we have all these "unknown faces" wielding immense power in Brussels - like Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council.
The democratically elected European Parliament then vote for the nominees, but at this point the nominees already have less mandate (for reasons given above) than the members of national parliaments (and the EU parliament). And, I might add, more power.
This is one of the main problems with the EU as a political union. It is a move away from grass-roots democracy towards a centralized monolith that disenfranchises millions and millions of people.
You seem to miss that the vote in parliament adds and doesn't remove mandate from the candidates. The MEPs have a very strong opinion on who is a suitable candidate and who isn't. They used their power to refuse candidates and demand others in the past and will do so in the future.
By your standards the European Commission has a mandate that is at least as strong as the one of any European country's government.
The question at hand is: do the EU commissioners have a stronger or weaker democratic mandate than national MPs?
When considering this question, the vote in the EU parliament is neither here nor there, because the person being voted for by them has not been directly elected by a single member of the public, possibly ever.
If a person is directly elected by the people he represents, then he has a stronger mandate than another who has not been directly elected. Mandate gets weaker the farther you are from direct election by the people.
Comparing commissioners to national members of parliament isn't fair, they are doing completely different jobs.
A member of the European parliament is one degree removed from public vote, just as a member of a national parliament. A European commissioner is two degree removed from the public, just like a European head of government. A minister in most member states is three degrees removed.
If you don't consider the vote in the EP for commissioners as a real vote because they can't pick their own candidate then it's three degrees removed as the candidates are picked by the heads of governments.
In any case I can't see how it's less democratic than the election system of any member state. The commissioners are as far away from the public vote as almost any member of government in the member states.
Both national MPs and EU commissioners are public officials who form public policy that affects citizens' lives. In that much they are comparable. Both procedurally and in scope of effect there will be differences of course (commissioners are much more powerful, and therfore should be held to a higher level of scrutiny).
In any case, similarity of jobs is orthogonal to the narrow question - who has the stronger mandate?
Take Person A who via an elected representative would like to effect legislative change in their nation. Who has the stronger mandate to take action?
In other words, which representative would be closer to the truth in saying that "they were acting in Person A's name"?
1. For the sake of argument, let's take the UK Prime Minister. He is voted for by a party consisting of members of the public via an open process to represent a specific platform; is elected directly by a constituency numbering in the low tens of thousands of people who happen to live in a geographical area of the nation under representation.
Furthermore, the representative is a widely known public figurehead with a well-known platform meaning that although members of the public in other constituencies cannot affect his election to parliament directly, they can affect the amount of power he wields. The election covers 70 million people.
2. For an EU Commissioner a shortlist of representatives are chosen in secret by a team of people, each of whom is a proxy, elected via a process similar to (1). One of the shortlist is chosen by a vote from members of a directly elected parliament. The election takes into consideration the views of 3/4 billion people.
The EU commissioner shortlist process is secret (and thus open to nefarious influence - go on: tell me this will not happen), the final vote is diluted by the views of an order of magnitude more people, spread over a much greater geographic area (meaning a much wider range of concerns need be taken into consideration), and the commissioner need not have been elected directly by anyone from the population he represents (other than via proxy).
Based on this, it is clear that the representative in scenario (1) has a stronger claim to be said to be acting in the name of Person A than the person elected via process (2).
The EU is hence less democratic than the institutions is is replacing, and is in some sense democratically regressive.
(And this is before any discussion about the differences in the legislative path between Westminster and the EU).
I agree. Thank you for the expanded explanation of the reasons behind my above brief comment.
I just note in passing with wry bemusement, that my comment that sparked such illuminating discussion apparently deserves only 0 points.
You know, if EU countries were genuinely concerned about their beloved citizens coming into contact with damaging chemicals, they could warn them on the evening news or something.
Hey there Dear Citizens, these products have been found
to cause cancer. Please avoid using them, and tell your
friends to avoid them too!
Best Regards,
Your Benevolent, Caring Overlords
Do you think that just might have an effect on the companies producing the toxic crap they force on us?
"Those naughty companies haven't stopped putting cancer-causing
chemicals in their products. You should still boycott them."
If they really cared, they could just keep informing the citizenry until they were safe.
Uh-huh, right, because EU governments have editorial control of the evening news, and also have bigger marketing budgets than the companies producing such chemicals.
Sure.
If they really cared, they could just keep informing the citizenry until they were safe.
No, if they really cared they would ban or strictly regulate the use of such chemicals.
But even if they didn't, surely news organizations would co-operate for a noble cause, yes?
> No, if they really cared they would ban or strictly regulate the use of such chemicals.
Sure, and if they really cared, they could do that even despite the TTIP, or they could reject or re-negotiate the TTIP. There's no way around that, regardless of whether you trust that governments are operating with our best interests at heart.
> But even if they didn't, surely news organizations would co-operate for a noble cause, yes?
As privately run corporations, news organizations go where the money is and I trust them even less than I trust the government. The number of ignoble causes they have cooperated on in the recent past leaves them with a very large credibility gap in my mind.
And while the government is not perfect, at least I live in a country where lobbying (aka bribery) is no where near as institutionalised and prevalent as you see in the U.S.
So while my government might not always have my best interests at heart, they are definitely more concerned and more trustworthy than a news organisation.
He didn't have a point. He just signaled that he can't think independently.
The video is a summary of what we were told happened, through the mainstream media. The story is absurd, which means it's not actually true! That, in turn, means that there was, in fact, a conspiracy!
Here's a few videos of an invisible plane hitting a building, which then collapses seemingly on its own: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWorDrTC0Qg .. but it wasn't on its own, of course, because an invisible plane hit it!
Feel free to start thinking for yourself any time now.
For the record, the video summarizes what we were told happened, through the media.
I shouldn't need to connect the dots for you, and you shouldn't dismiss me as some crackpot lunatic (even though you've been programmed to). Try independent thinking some time. It's pretty cool.
Alright, but if governments work for the people, as we're told, then they'd also erm.. "regulate" news organizations and make them actually serve the public. You know full well they could, if they wanted to.
That would include warning us of cancer-causing shit that we come into contact with all the damn time.
Strangely enough, they don't. What does that tell us?
There's probably nothing stopping the individual members from doing something about it and many of them probably will in the form of laws, not news. Sadly, assuming that it's evidenced based, it would be better if it was an EU wide thing.
Because there is freedom of transportation of goods within the EU, banning a substance in one country does nothing to prevent products containing the substance reaching consumers.
It might be forbidden to bar a product altogether, because you would be distorting the competitive landscape. That's the case with GMOs, there are a few temporary bans, but no solid and definitive legislation, because that would be forbidden.
Someday! Funny that you should say this but David Cameron wants us to never be left alone by the state and anti terror laws are regularly used against people who are not terrorists. The police are being militarised and the human rights act is being removed from law here in the UK. Someday looks like tomorrow to me.
Probably not terrorist but maybe extremist? If you haven't heard that's David Cameron and Theresa May's current choice of undefined term for people they want to attack but that haven't broken any terror laws (or any other actually).
Opening up trade is bad by default... to those that benefit from the barriers that are in place. I am always suspicious of a lot of emotive campaigning in response to trade agreements that opens up trade.
Sure, other things can be considered trade barriers. Different currencies, or even different languages as well. The problem is that most people would prefer to have those differences even if it means less trade, which is why the only way they will get this steaming pile of shit ratified is by trickery and secrecy. Nothing is quite like bringing freedom to people by force...
It's not that opening up trade is bad by default, it's that opening up trade is not an absolute value which overrides all other considerations (in this case, an individual's right to protection from harm by third parties, or a democracy's right to make decisions within its own borders).
Did you by chance read the article? This has little to do with opening up trade and much to do with providing ridiculous amount of power to any major corporation.
EDIT:
Suppose I'm a producer of bottled water from Germany. I bottle a lot of water in California. The Californians vote to move to heavy water rationing and regulation due to the threat of continuous draught. This hurts my business, so should I be allowed, as a corporation, to sue the state of California, have any possible trials and hearings within a closed courtroom and possibly overrule the vote?
Agree, the motivation of all this is, at least, worrisome.
You should be allowed, as a corporation, to sue the state of California... in California. But this is not what we are talking about here.
We are talking about the creation of new special courtrooms above the laws of California, staffed by people that worked for corporations and when they left the job are going to work for corporations again.
That was a submission from a different publication, though.