111–120 of 122 posts
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Exactly the EU should be a free trade zone and the should unify in a way that makes it easier for goods, services and people to be sold everywhere. The is almost no need for a waterhead burocracy in brussel.
I don't think you meant "people" there. Maybe "labor"?
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The issue here is that the EU currently is a de facto confederation. The EU parliament can not be, and is not, the supreme legislative body for the simple reason that the member states are still sovereign, with the ability to withdraw (though there are some legal questions in some member countries about how that would be possible). It is the same issue facing the US under the Articles of Confederation, where Congress…
> It is a "workaround" for the fact that a federal EU is currently entirely unpalatable to the electorate in most European countries I'm sure in every EU country, most voters would prefer it if the unelected commission couldn't overrule the elected parliament.
E.g. under the UK constitution (yes, the UK has a constitution, it is just not codified in a single act) the UK Parliament is sovereign, to the extent that it can not even bind future parliaments.
So without tricky constitutional changes (particularly tricky because parliament has pretty much "bootstrapped" its own constitutional powers in the UK into a position were giving them away again will need to be very carefully structured to stand up in court) it is pretty much impossible to grant the EU parliament any real power.
This is part of why the current structure of the EU uses a web of treaties to bind the executives of the member states in various to seek the passage of local laws to implement EU directives, with convoluted measures to cajole the national legislatives to follow through. It's still not ironclad - plenty of directives languish in national parliaments for years before being implemented (or get implemented with inconsistent differences in different member countries) exactly because the EU has very few means to push it through - but it's a far stronger method than trying to tie the national parliaments with no constitutional support.
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This is just sophistry now. The commissioner is playing the role he's supposed to play in the EU institutions, and I have seen no indication that he's done anything illegal or held the parliament in contempt.
> I have seen no indication that he's done anything illegal or held the parliament in contempt He's said he will ignore the decisons arrived at by the democratically elected representatives of the people. That seems a pretty clear indication to me.
Nothing in what he said indicates he wants to try to overrule the parliament, only that the EU executive branch believes ACTA is important, and so if the current solution is not approved by parliament they want all the information they can on how to make it acceptable.
We might not like that he's likely to try to go back for a second try with what will likely be relatively unsubstantial changes, but it is not unusual for proposals to be revised and revisited.
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He didn't say he'd ignore court rulings. He told the trade committee (which isn't a court AFAIK) that advising against ACTA wouldn't stop the European court of justice from investigating its legality.
He mentioned that he would try to weasel his way around it - "If the Court questions the conformity of the agreement with the Treaties we will assess at that stage how this can be addressed."
While it is possible that he wants to try to weasel a procedural end-run around rejections, what he's actually said does not provide any basis for jumping to that conclusion.
Someone this determined to do something so wrong cannot be assumed to be neutral. This guy must be corrupt and on someone's pay-list. It would be in the EU's interest to start an investigation of Karel De Gucht to determine if this person is bribed and if these proceedings is a result of corruption. The EU would be wise to do so for its own business sake and before it's perception as a democratic body is tarnished in…
> It would be in the EU's interest to start an investigation Unfortunately the EU's track record isn't very good in this regard[1]. > If the EU loses its perception as democratic I can't speak for everyone but the EU is not a democratic institution (in terms of direct or participatory democracy) and some people understand this. > chances are that the rich and populous democracies which funds it will be forced to stop…
Withdrawal from the EU is a right of member states. However, withdrawal from the Eurozone wasn't envisioned or planned for and therefore there is no organized way to leave the Euro monetary zone (Eurozone).
EDIT: Not all EU countries use the Euro and therefore part of the Eurozone.
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The EU has proven itself to be completely economically inept Err, what? The EU (& Common Market before it) has done wonders for trade and business. That's why many countries want to get into it. Several member states have had soverign debt crises (but then, the USA almost defaulted), but that has nothing to do with the EU. (More EU intergration might have stopped that)
I don't think any mainstream perspective claims that the crises in the various member states are caused by anything other than their being in the Eurozone, if that is what you are claiming. Since the problems with having currency union without political integration were widely discussed at the time the union was being set up, I think that the failure to address them qualifies as 'completely economically inept'. Maybe…
Crisis in Ireland was caused by a property bubble, and ridiculus lending from banks causing them to be essentially insolvent. Unconditional guarantee of all Irish bank debts by the Irish Government in Sept 2008 led to the Irish Government being unable to borrow money on the international bond market at a non-crazy rate.
If only there was more EU wide banking regulation.
the MEP's aprove comissioners and therefore must have the ability to censue or remove them.
as "The Parliament may also block certain Commission decisions where there has been a delegation of powers to the Commission and may repeal such delegation of powers."
If a Commissioner directly states that they will ignore the will of parliment they deserve every thing they get
The commission needs to be neutered before the EU can be considered truly democratic. The fact that this guy can come straight out and say he's going to ignore court rulings and the democratic will of the elected MEPs with no fear of reprisals, because he's not elected, yet he can hold so much power ... it's sick.
The EU is not democratic. It goes to great lengths to avoid referendums by its subjects on whether they wish to be part of the EU or not. If they do have a referendum and the result is not what the EU wants, another is held.
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I don't think any mainstream perspective claims that the crises in the various member states are caused by anything other than their being in the Eurozone, if that is what you are claiming. Since the problems with having currency union without political integration were widely discussed at the time the union was being set up, I think that the failure to address them qualifies as 'completely economically inept'. Maybe…
I don't think any mainstream perspective claims that the crises in the various member states are caused by anything other than their being in the Eurozone Crisis in Ireland was caused by a property bubble, and ridiculus lending from banks causing them to be essentially insolvent. Unconditional guarantee of all Irish bank debts by the Irish Government in Sept 2008 led to the Irish Government being unable to borrow mon…
In addition, the original cause of the ridiculous lending from banks - both in the US and EU - was ridiculously loose monetary policy, as a result of over-large governments trying to stimulate their economies out of the recession of the early 2000's. If banks have more money available to them, they're going to loan it out: that's their business.
If only we had more small and independent countries with their own currencies.
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Don't you mean a ->federation Switzerland is a confederation. Its 26 states have a lot of power, through the senate, state majority on national votes as well as sovereign areas like state taxes, education, state traffic. However, within boundaries, the Swiss national parliament can overrule state parliaments any day (and national people votes can overrule pretty much anything anyway).
No, I mean confederation. Switzerland is a confederation in name and by tradition only, but has had all the features of a federation since 1848. After civil war in 1847, the new constitution was drawn up expressly to create a federal central government to replace the weak old con-federate governments, and to have the cantons cede some of their sovereignty to it, in the same was the US Constitution had the states cede…