Germans pitch EU plan to circumvent national vetoes | Euractiv
https://www.euractiv.com/news/germans-pitch-eu-plan-to-circumvent-national-vetoes/
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https://www.euractiv.com/news/germans-pitch-eu-plan-to-circumvent-national-vetoes/
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Good I really hope this happens. Vetos will destroy the EU. It’s not democracy if one autocrat can stop everything.
I believe veto was the thing that has destroyed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Veto was put in place so that smaller countries wouldn’t have to worry that after joining EU bigger countries will outvote and exploit them. I think requiring unanimity is fine in some cases but EU should have mechanisms to move on without some members if they object. Trade deals? Unanimity required. Sanctions on foreign countries? Majority decides. Military aid? Majority decides.
I feel like you could also provide protection for smaller countries through law and the ECJ, or legislative procedures/instruments other than vetos. For example laws to prevent decisions that are overwhelmingly negative for few countries, processes that direct compensation to countries negatively affected by laws, or a veto leading to a compulsory mediation process rather than a full stop.
Totally agree. There should be a set of laws protecting the rights of the smaller countries and veto should be removed.
It’s not democracy if the majority can compel the minority to go against their will. Germany and France will become the dominant powers even more so than they already are which will ultimately result in the slow erosion and downfall of the EU being what it claims to stand for. Vetoes and consensus democracy were founding ideas for a reason.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_democracy
It’s convenient to hold up Hungary as the evil example of misused vetoes but the solution to that is to move to suspend countries as a member, for acting in bad faith repeatedly. Using freedom from association. Not to destroy your democracy from within by making it less democratic.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association
That’s… Exactly what democracy is though. Like Brexit is a great example of this. The majority forced the minority against their will.
I take the rest of your point though and agree. We just need to get past the “one or two arseholes” issue. I’d be happy with some kind of supermajority decision making process.
Only to some extent. Modern democracy typically includes some forms of minority protection to reduce the risk of a “Tyranny of the majority”.
That said, the EUs qualified majority system already has some such measures, like giving smaller countries more votes in parliament relative to population.
Also every country has an equal vote in the council.
“Tyranny of the majority” is a MAGA euphemism for “we’re not the majority.”
Dude, that expression is soooo much older than Maga. 1835 is not a year suspect of the right wing assholery of today.
Doesn’t make it any less worthless of an expression.
The majority having a different opinion doesn’t mean they are tyrants for going through with it.
Are there instances where it was the case? Sure. Look at slavery.
But the great majority of the cases it is a worthless expression made by people who can’t stand they are in the minority.
Nah, the expression has merit in political science, it has only recently been profaned by the US reich wing, because they like to couch their bigotry in the language of science, sociology and intellectual rigor. Because by misusing and coopting those terns, they get to redefine them in the public eye and weaken arguments against their position that rely on those terms.
Your perception of the term “tyranny of the majority”, a term originally coined to point out the conservative overreach against and suppression of minorities, is a great example of how they colonize language.
Are saying, the French Alexis de Tocqueville who died in 1859 was a Trump follower?
Aye, you’re right in that democracy isn’t just one singular concept, there are various forms.
But think on what the idea of democracy is supposed to represent. It’s supposed to be rule by the people. If 48% of the people are having their authority to rule superceded by the 52% then how can you say it’s rule by the people? It’s rule only by the majority. Democracy only in colloquial common parlance.
The word democracy has been bastardised even since its very conception so it’s difficult to define without arguments. The EU however have already defined their democracy at the highest state level on similar principles that anarchists do, of consensus. All countries are equal, all countries can say no. This will throw that away in favour of less democracy, less equality, less say in how the continent functions, in tyranny of the majority.
It will be the beginning of the end for the European project. And I’m not saying that lightly or as hyperbole.
Wouldn’t a more elegant solution be more thought put into what kind of votes need a supermajority or some specific % over 50 to need a successful vote? Surely at some point, for it to be a democracy, you do need the majority rule to win the day, right++? I’d argue one or two nations vetoing a thing agreed upon by everyone else is more explicitly anti democratic than those nations needing to abide by a vote they handily lost.
I think the EU is at the limits of what a loose confederation can do, we’ve seen historically these arrangements just can’t really function long term on a large scale. And the argument here is that for Europe to stay relevant in a world where the US and China, not to mention Russia, exists if not as outright adversaries then stiff competitors, there needs to be a better ability to coordinate this like military and money. Especially the latter, I’d argue… how many European start ups immediately abandon ship for the US as soon as they go public because there’s a pile of investment money there rather than the fractured markets of Europe? That problem is never going away on its own, even with the US playing target practice with its feet (slight digression there, but I think it’s one of the most obvious examples of why the EU needs reform towards stronger federal power).
At a certain point, if you want a large functioning democratic body with any power, you need to submit to the decisions of that power whether you agree with the decision or not. That’s not just colloquial versus not, that’s the very essence of democracy imo. If you can just opt out of decisions you don’t like, that’s not really democratic rule, that’s just a forum for discussion.
++(Obviously, this implicitly needs rights and protections to prevent one group from outright repressing another, but still, a veto seems like a really, really inelegant solution to avoiding tyranny of the majority situations.)
You are making the mistake to believe the EU can only compete by becoming what it despises. This will have the opposite effect in reality, with the EU breaking apart.
shrug I don’t see a path away from it; separate, the individual nations aren’t big enough to be relevant. China isn’t going to be supplanted for the manufacturing hub nor the US as the financial hub without more cohesion, and so Europe will continue to lose relevancy in terms of ability to influence world geopolitics.
We’ve seen time and time again promising European countries jump ship for the US when it’s time to go public… the money is here in Europe but broken into fractured markets with just as fractured rules and regulations. Why would a company looking for investment bother when they can just go to the US and get one big pile of it?
This isn’t even addressing even more practical problems like military.
Confederacies just don’t last very long historically. They either break or become more centralised eventually.
[citation needed]
(And they often break apart after briefly becoming more centralized, in an misguided attempt to force unity where there isn’t any anylonger)
First two that come to mind as the most problematic and needing reform are the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the United States nearly collapsing with the confederation is an obvious example. Can you think of any in the modern era that have succeeded long term?
Put another way: they were already falling apart. Them falling apart wasn’t the fault of centralising. It was the fault of the loose union giving the governing body too little power to govern effectively. I’ve given some examples of this in the EU with both the military and balkanized access to capital directly leading to us losing lucrative companies we created to the US. It’s like a brain drain but for wealth generating businesses. Military problems are obvious to all with Russia now and the tough spot we’ve found ourselves in outsourcing our defense to the US for decades… what is the solution to these problems if not stronger federal power for the EU? Because they aren’t going away.
I’d suggest the federalism of the US isn’t what we or most people despise about the US. The two aren’t related.
The US was at most very briefly a confederacy, and the US civil war had little to do with that despite one side calling itself such.
The EU is an obvious successful modern example, and if you want historical examples, then the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nations lasted a millenium and despite sometimes nominally having an emporer it was practically a confederation.
And besides, ask some person living in a Democrat majority US state how they feel about the current Trump administration of their federal government interfering with their life and sending a militarized police occupation force into their cities?
you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means
Qualified majority makes sure that even without veto France and Germany don’t become dominant.
It’s not 1960 anymore. Sure, early on the EU (well its predecessors) were just France and Germany. But today? The combined population of Germany and France is 150 million. The EU population is 450 million. The most populace country, Germany, represents just 19% of the EU’s total population.
For a comparison, in the US, California represents about 12% of the total population, so not that different. And historically, when the US was founded, Virginia contained about 19% of the total US population.
The EU has grown immensely, but its governmental structure reflects an earlier era. Veto powers made sense when everything in the EU other then Germany and France was a rounding error. But the EU has grown so much that France and Germany now occupy a similar position to any number of most-populated states and provinces in countries around the world. One province having 19% of the population is not unusual. Hell, the largest German state has 21% of the German population, and they don’t run an internal veto system.
The veto system made sense when Germany and France truly controlled the EU and dominated its population. But as the block has grown, these countries now look more like the most populated provinces or states you find in every country. And their relative influence will only decline further as the EU continues to expand. The EU has grown and matured, and it’s time for its government to do so as well.
You’re absolutely right and I do agree. At the same time what this is about is not about many smaller countries getting dominated by big countries. This is about prohibiting foreign powers to bribe their way into power in EU via puppets in a single EU country. As a citizen in a small country I have no concerns that our neighbours in also smaller countries will not agree on certain political decisions where Germany and France may have a different persuasion. If so I naturally would expect a diplomatic consensus would be found.
So the plan is to ask nicely not to veto? I’m surely missing something.
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Yeah fuck off. We never joined a state, so spare the democracy bullshit.
Germany arguing for strength over legitimacy should raise some feathers.
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That’s a good way to dispose of the few nations that oppose genocide.
Two examples listed where it would have helped oppose genocide.
Fair point / perspective. Very disappointed to hear that about Slovenia. They’ve been so progressive in other ways.
They have a conservative government now since June.