This is an interesting initiative but doesn’t really have a convincing answer on the democratisation part tbqh. twitter.com/lemondefr/stat…
The idea of a european assembly alongside a European Parliament is one democratic assembly for the price of two, and double hatting national politicians didn’t work, which is why we have the European Parliament right now.
The underlying difficulty is that they are trying to create a sovereign European political space without the member states basically ruling the show. I get why, but this isn’t how to do it. You might think – I do – that nation states are
on the way out but they are here and (absent the creation of a European republic, which isn’t really on the cards) you’ve got to deal with them.
And in any case there’s no point in building more democratic institutions up top without rooting them at the base and creating convincing democratic approaches that counter the prevailing feeling of impotence among the public. Nation states are struggling with that,
A European assembly would struggle ten times (or 27 times) over.
All for further democratisation of the European government level but don’t see this as the way to get it.
Originally posted as a thread of 7 tweets on Twitter on 9 December 2018. View the original thread.