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0 pointsmfuzzey2mo ago0 comments

Would you let one or two cities have veto power over the policy of an entire country? If not then what's the difference here? If yes do you think that would work?

Of course the important thing is to decide what should be handled at the city, region, nation and EU level. There's a tradeoff. Decisions made at lower levels are generally better for accountability and give better adaptability to local circumstances but on the other hand they often lose leverage.

A city wouldn't be able to talk as an equal to large companies like Apple and Google for example, even many countries can't. But the EU can. Replace Apple / Google by Russia / China / US and it's even worse.

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SllX2mo ago· 2 in thread

> Would you let one or two cities have veto power over the policy of an entire country?

And this is why analogies are bad.

A few important details:

1) The EU is not a country.

2) The one-country veto already has limited applications within the context of the EU. Foreign policy is one of the most important, but most EU laws start from the Commission and go through Parliament instead where they pass by a simple majority.

3) What von der Leyen is in effect asking for is for EU member nations, who are sovereign and with each having their own foreign policy, to subordinate their foreign policy to the EU’s foreign policy. That is a massive power shift from the members to the EU Commission.

mfuzzeyOP2mo ago

Political structures exist to influence the world around them.

A thousand or even a few hundred years ago most people travelled very little and often were born, lived and died in the same village. At that time the village was the natural unit of organisation. As communications improved, with horses, trains, planes, internet the unit of political organisation had to scale up to cities, regions, nations and now supra national organisations like the EU

The nation state is an outdated concept that has lived its time. In a world where those we need to talk to are the US, China, Russia even big EU countries like France and Germany are too small so we need to scale up.

SllX2mo ago

The nation-state is a current living concept that nation-states and their peoples for the most part are incredibly attached to. If you want to convince the peoples of the EU that is an outdated concept that has lived its time, that is a tough and long road ahead of you, or von der Layen if that is the road she’s pursuing but right now there’s plenty of national governments well beyond Hungary that have been displeased with von der Leyen specifically stepping on their toes.

Right now, the way the EU is constituted, the EU takes a backseat to national governments on most foreign policy. Trade is the biggest exception. Reversing that is as an ask she can make, but it’s an enormous ask that if the member states of the EU concede to, will still be an enormous concession, and it’s not something the EU is structurally positioned under its own Treaties and laws to either command nor demand.

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