I’m sort of torn on this. I really like the idea of all member states having an equal say on things, but at the same time Hungary and Poland’s fairly extreme stance is holding the whole bloc back.
Is there a democratic way to solve this? I’m not aware of one.
The problem is that many decisions require complete consensus, a majority isn’t enough. Maybe changing that to, say, 80%, which is still an overwhelming majority, helps with political blackmailing.
I would probably, personally, be in favour of such implementation, but I can also understand that I support it because it aligns with my views. Would I support it if the situation was different? Say EU-wide all-electronic-comms scan for some bs reason, and my country is the only one (or in a tiny minority) objecting it? Most likely not.
Politics is tough. People are tough.
Yeah, I’d never voluntarily become a politician ;)
The unanimity provisions were put in place precisely so that individual nations would not have their sovereignty eroded over time. It is likely that many nations would never have joined the EU without such protections in place.
This is a good point. I suppose the EU must as a matter of principle go at the speed of its weakest link, even if that link is being weak on purpose. So any deeper integration has to happen separately (via eg. the eurozone or shenghen)
I fear this might be the case. The other option is full federalisation, but things are not going so well over in America either.
Yeah, I think that bottom up centralisation of powers is more resilient than top down decentralisation of powers anyway. And the first one is what a multi speed Europe would be.
I don’t like this, this merely remove the idea of consensus.
The problem is that a country is causing problems. A consensus of all the other countries to force a decision to the black sheep would be a solution IMO. Or merely giving more power to a justice court of the EU so that member states are actually forced to respect the laws of the EU.
I fear that that would just allow the erosion of democracy to be ignored until it affected 20% of member states at which point the bar would have to be moved again