At some point you have to ask - at what point are we better off without the EU than with an EU that is constantly enlarging itself through the creation of these rules? There seems to be little public insight into this process because most national media organizations are simply too mediocre to ever investigate this stuff properly so there will not public pressure to create a framework to constrain the system.
I think that the Single Market/European Economic Community style project is an extremely fruitful and good idea. Lowering barriers to trade in capital, goods and services among Europeans is fabulous. The problem is that under the guise of single market legislation a lot more is going on. And, as the previous commenter (MP) argued, there is little insight in the countries of what is going on in there. So we need to take control of the whole system and ensure that it narrowly focus on its tasks. I have made a proposal in that direction, which is available here in Substack ("THe Consitution of Innovation) and in a dedicated web site:
I agree with you that a common Europe is a worthwhile project that deserves attention and support. The problem that I see is what has been built is not fit for purpose. Far too much of the EU functions like the UN (lots of ceremony and media attention, little impact) and too little is like the WTO ( mostly lawyers, little media). Europe needs new institutions with purpose
Why can existing institutions not be reformed? A major point of the article was about how EU government responds to incentives. How about tweaking the incentives?
What are you proposing to be done? Move everyone to paris or Berlin? Abolish the commission? No more rotating presidencies? What is the mechanism by which these reforms are done? All EU bodies together have about 60k employees which is not small so it's going to be difficult to abolish one of those organizations. Creating a new, narrow purpose functional institution will reduce the scope of the EU bloat while providing an opportunity for newer, more adaptive actors.
as I said, the article is about mechanisms and incentives, not about whether you believe that EU government overreaches.
I'm not in the EU, but I think it's a good idea that just needs some care and perhaps pruning. For instance, from the article's description, it's generally too easy to get EU legislation adopted. I would consider tools like audits, sunset limits, probably an arms-length review body asked with detecting redundancy (and calculating costs, unintended consequences).
You seem to want to abolish one or more of the three institutions involved, which sounds quite reactionary to me. forcing laws to come through different organizations is one of the best ideas of governance we ever had, since our goal is careful laws, not crazily-undamped legislative activity.
Narrow ("efficient", "fastmoving") organizations are dangerous ones. There are contexts where that makes sense, but IMO not large-scale governance, where mistakes cause death or large/long economic damage.
This is a brilliant summary of a deeply flawed set of institutions. I speak with many stakeholders in the EU system, who lament how laws are rammed through by the Commission which are not closely scrutinised and which they are looking to water down or roll back on. The traditional mechanism for correcting this would be some sort of direct democratic accountability for the Commission, but it is designed expressly to be immune to such scrutiny.
Subsidiarity control by national parliaments should be used more often - parliaments have the power under the Treaty of Lisbon to block unnecessary legislation - unfortunately it is seldom used.
This is a very good piece, but I feel like in trying to make its point, it oversimplifies some points. The council’s presence in trilogues comes after lengthy council negotiations on a council position, for instance. More big picture, many problems are also due to the lack of willingness of member states to give up sovereignty on specific files, instead focusing on short-term national interests. In the end a messy compromise often gets passed that maybe should not pass at all.
Interesting, and I especially appreciate the trilogue/4-column mechanism. Why is it that we humans have not more effectively, widely, developed specific processes as tools for thinking?
I also wonder whether AI could become a powerful aid - a comment below mentions lack of scrutiny and inevitability of overlaps. But those are the sort of thing that AI could help, since an AI can be expert on the entire body of laws (not subject to human limits - or potentially not human biases, either).
At some point you have to ask - at what point are we better off without the EU than with an EU that is constantly enlarging itself through the creation of these rules? There seems to be little public insight into this process because most national media organizations are simply too mediocre to ever investigate this stuff properly so there will not public pressure to create a framework to constrain the system.
What's the point of creating 13 thousand laws across 450 million people without any of the traditional organs of power:
Court system
Police
Taxation
Civil service
Army
The answer is that no one cares or is really paying attention besides some insiders in Brussels
To an outsider the eu has become a jobs program for civil servants and lawyers
Remember the whole strasbourg/Brussels thing?
The eu is by design a weak horribly complex institution that is holding Europe back.
I think that the Single Market/European Economic Community style project is an extremely fruitful and good idea. Lowering barriers to trade in capital, goods and services among Europeans is fabulous. The problem is that under the guise of single market legislation a lot more is going on. And, as the previous commenter (MP) argued, there is little insight in the countries of what is going on in there. So we need to take control of the whole system and ensure that it narrowly focus on its tasks. I have made a proposal in that direction, which is available here in Substack ("THe Consitution of Innovation) and in a dedicated web site:
constitutionofinnovation.eu.
We need to refocus the project before it is too late and we lose it, that is my view.
I agree with you that a common Europe is a worthwhile project that deserves attention and support. The problem that I see is what has been built is not fit for purpose. Far too much of the EU functions like the UN (lots of ceremony and media attention, little impact) and too little is like the WTO ( mostly lawyers, little media). Europe needs new institutions with purpose
Why can existing institutions not be reformed? A major point of the article was about how EU government responds to incentives. How about tweaking the incentives?
What are you proposing to be done? Move everyone to paris or Berlin? Abolish the commission? No more rotating presidencies? What is the mechanism by which these reforms are done? All EU bodies together have about 60k employees which is not small so it's going to be difficult to abolish one of those organizations. Creating a new, narrow purpose functional institution will reduce the scope of the EU bloat while providing an opportunity for newer, more adaptive actors.
as I said, the article is about mechanisms and incentives, not about whether you believe that EU government overreaches.
I'm not in the EU, but I think it's a good idea that just needs some care and perhaps pruning. For instance, from the article's description, it's generally too easy to get EU legislation adopted. I would consider tools like audits, sunset limits, probably an arms-length review body asked with detecting redundancy (and calculating costs, unintended consequences).
You seem to want to abolish one or more of the three institutions involved, which sounds quite reactionary to me. forcing laws to come through different organizations is one of the best ideas of governance we ever had, since our goal is careful laws, not crazily-undamped legislative activity.
Narrow ("efficient", "fastmoving") organizations are dangerous ones. There are contexts where that makes sense, but IMO not large-scale governance, where mistakes cause death or large/long economic damage.
This is a brilliant summary of a deeply flawed set of institutions. I speak with many stakeholders in the EU system, who lament how laws are rammed through by the Commission which are not closely scrutinised and which they are looking to water down or roll back on. The traditional mechanism for correcting this would be some sort of direct democratic accountability for the Commission, but it is designed expressly to be immune to such scrutiny.
Interesting that you focus on the Commission - the article seems to spread blame more widely.
Politics over policies. The ‘impact assessments’, often mainly a box to check off, should also be improved for better quality.
Subsidiarity control by national parliaments should be used more often - parliaments have the power under the Treaty of Lisbon to block unnecessary legislation - unfortunately it is seldom used.
This is a very good piece, but I feel like in trying to make its point, it oversimplifies some points. The council’s presence in trilogues comes after lengthy council negotiations on a council position, for instance. More big picture, many problems are also due to the lack of willingness of member states to give up sovereignty on specific files, instead focusing on short-term national interests. In the end a messy compromise often gets passed that maybe should not pass at all.
Interesting, and I especially appreciate the trilogue/4-column mechanism. Why is it that we humans have not more effectively, widely, developed specific processes as tools for thinking?
I also wonder whether AI could become a powerful aid - a comment below mentions lack of scrutiny and inevitability of overlaps. But those are the sort of thing that AI could help, since an AI can be expert on the entire body of laws (not subject to human limits - or potentially not human biases, either).