Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "The EU needs to Change. Urgently. (ft. VOLT Europa)" video.

  1. 3:49 I fundamentally dissagree with the idea of not having veto power in the hands of member states. I do believe that the ability to sanction nations that are promoting undemocratic policies within the nation shouldn't be possible to veto. Backsliding is a real problem and undemocratic politicians can misuse the veto right in this backsliding process. But having a veto right for national governments in what should be EU wide law is essential. Because anything that doesn't work for all members shouldn't be EU law but laws that the individual legislatures of the individual countries should make law or not as they please. Ideally the individual legeslatures should also decide exactly how to implement laws with the EU formulating the overall principles rather then laws. 4:22 Special rights are important. It's not ideal with the whole ransom part, but nations need to be able to stop laws that's harmful to them. And yes, force the EU to make adjustments to remove those harmful elements if needed if the overall proposal is to be made law. The problem isn't vetoing itself, and qualified majority isn't enough here. The EU is not a country, and laws should not be made at a EU level just because a majority of EU citizens wants a law. A majority of EU citizens don't have the experience to know what is or isn't harmful to the minority and without a veto right you end up with a tyranny of the majority at the cost of smaller ethnic groups. Although I'm a green voter and dissagree with the German decision to block the ban on cars that doesn't stop individual legeslatures from banning them, and instead of removing Germanys ability to block that proposed law the individual legeslatures should do that in my view. As for Viktor Orbán etc... As frustrating as that is the problem there is democratic backsliding in Poland, Hungary and Turkey, not that they have veto rights or say in EU and NATO respectively. The EU should have the capability of enforcing democracy at some level even when democratic backsliding causes autocrats to get the power to use their nations veto rights to hold the EU hostage. The reform needed isn't to take away Hungarys or Polands ability to veto in general, but to give the EU the capability to sanction or even expell member states that are backsliding. Certain minimum shared values should be enforceable even despite veto powers. If conservatives wants to ban abortions or gay marriages or whatever I may think that's wrong of them, but that should ultimately be decided at a national level, with the freedom of movement anyone affected by this at least has the option to vote with their feet and just leave. But jailing gay people or banning abortions to save lives etc like what's happening in some countries should be a absolute minimum that the EU should not tolerate regardless of who's in power in a given member state. Different nations find different solutions to how to implement democracy, sometimes these methods don't seem equally democratic. The first past the post system in France and the UK for instance is something I've been extremely critical of in the past and should be reformed at some point. But not by the EU. The EU should enforce freedom of speech and democracy, but the details has to be picked locally. Likewise with freedom of speech. In some countries the choice has been to accept absolutely anything like in France with the Muhammad drawings. In others freedom of speech is intended as a protection from the government and the majority population, not as a right for the majority to bully minorities etc so people are expected to keep a minimum of respect for others at least even if they may still express anything they wish. So although anything may be expressed there may be consequences after the fact if said expression was meant to cause harm to others. Both approaches are valid. But the fundamental idea that you should have the ability to express yourself about any problems in your society without fear. People shouldn't end up in jail for expressing themselves unless encouraging violence. At most perhaps a fine or a need to pay reparations to someone harmed by your expression after the fact. There's so many nuances involved in all of this and the nuances has to be dealt with locally even if the overall idea should be enforceable by the EU in my view. Qualified majority just isn't enough. Many ethnic groups are too small to stop laws harmful to them with qualified majority.
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  2. Regarding the critique. Undemocratic, too slow and takes away national sovereignty. You can't really have all three. I don't believe the EU being slow is a problem. It's not the EUs job to be fast. It's the national goverments job to be agile. The EU is there to help us work together. But you can't get that many nations to align fast in a democratic way. The bigger the democracy the less democratic it is by default.
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  3. 2:20 This one I'm actually agreeing with you on. Just allowing a body with a single representative pr nation to propose laws is problematic and fails to represent the proportionality of the member states. Laws should be proposed by a proportional organ.
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  4. 0:51 Well, personally I'm against the idea of a union to begin with. I'd like it to be a confederation. 2:03 That's a good thing. They shouldn't make up a majority of the seats.
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  5. Are you guys arguing for MMP? While I do agree that multi-tier constituencies that overlap can be good (that's essentially what we use in Norway through the use of regional constituencies overlapped by 19 leveling seats at a national level). However if you argue for the German system where there's single representative constituencies that's being overlapped by bigger multi-member ones then I believe that's extremely harmful.
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