We've been through this several times before, EV.
Oh, God, haven't we just, it is wearily familiar. The
so patronising 'we've been through this several times before, EV', the not too long to retirement schoolteacher dealing patiently with just another tiresome, annoyingly awkward, know-it-all but ever-so-slighly dim teenager, pfm's own sensible uncle, all the facts to hand but entirely innocent of the the underlying truths. Yes, we've been here before, uncle PsB.
First, your number of 7 presidents is far, far too low. The EU has a lot more than that. Still, the real number is probably lower than the number of Lords in the UK, so there. (Why does a middling country like the UK need 817 Lords and Ladies, including 25 "not currently eligible" (as if any of them were ever elected)? Feudal legacy, profligate pomp, or just a dysfunctional (and not very democratic) way of cobbling together an upper chamber?)
Oh, I think that we can all agree that the vastly overbloated HoL is overdue for abolition or fundamental reform, but to compare the HoL with the European Commission is both absurd and disingenuous. The HoL doesn't propose legislation, it merely debates legislation that has been proposed by the government and debated in the Commons. It can't reject that draft legislation, but can propose amendments for further consideration by the HoC. In that respect it is more like the ridiculous EP, that over-lunched, over-remunerated and over-expended body of nobodies trekking forever between Brussels and Strasbourg, but with the advantage of some seriously knowledgeable and experienced public and not-so-public figures amongst the ever-increasing sea of drab politically-ermined appointees.
Second, there is plenty of effective democracy across the EU, both within its member states but also in the way decision makers within EU institutions are selected and overseen. The members of the European Council are all elected, MEPs are all elected, together they pick, confirm and oversee the Commission to work on its areas of competence, etc.
Beyond the member states, effective only in theory. You've been swallowing too much of that soothing EC press office ointment. The European Council, so oddly similarly nomenclatured to the Council of the EU and the unrelated (but with a curiously common HQ city, flag and anthem) Council of Europe, conducts only EU27 business when the doors close behind it. The European Parliament is a strange and remote institution, with an electoral structure and geographical constituency completely unfamiliar to those on these shores, if sometimes less so on the continent, the Parliament itself comprising dominant so-called 'grand coalitions' which represent a predominantly mid-European, pro-EU, social-democratic political hegenomy and provide the (predominantly white, male) man-power to the horse-traded into place members of the European Commission, itself the effective executive of the EU, framing and proposing legislation before posting it to the EP to be agonisingly debated, committeed and sub-committeed before being dutifully rubber stamped and sent back to the Commission to frame, shovel through the national legislations without further troubling their Parliaments, neatly press officed, and sent on to the CJEU to be enforced by the politically highly activist ECJ. And we wonder why the bewildered, befuddled, bebugger'd and totally disenfranchised EU electorates can't be bothered to turn up the EP elections!
Please make up your mind once and for all. Is the EU essentially:
- An empire, evil or otherwise, in which case a lack of democracy is surely a given, and complaints about accoutrements (good word, that) like imperial pretension, a standing army, flag, hymn etc. are just part of the package
- A fledgling federal state, in which case you would expect things like a common currency, a standing army and other accoutrements to develop over time, as well as democratic tools to control these
- A technocracy set up just to manage a specific set of common interests of its member states (in which case you can criticize a lack of efficiency but complaining about a lack of things such as a proper standing army is a bit daft, and the democracy issue becomes less relevant)
- Or is it something else?
You know already what the EU isn't: it is not a free trade zone or a nation-state.
It sounds to me as if you need to make your mind, not me, I'm pretty clear on it.
The EU might be defined as all of those things, except the nation state, to which it entirey antipathetic. An empire in the making, sans democracy etc, certainly. A fledgling federal state, even more so, but one with, lets see, imperial pretensions? Yes. A technocracy indeed, with an irrelevant democracy, and inclinations towards a standing army, indeed. If it isn't also a free trade zone, it is entirely irrelevant, the single market (and elements of the CU) being the only aspect of it which has any real merit.
What do you want it to be. If we can move beyond an alternative to the tories?