Can you name such a country please? I only know countries where the head of government is either elected directly or chosen by parliament.

I know, Germany is their baseline. Yet why present it as a German problem? It’s a global problem.

According to a recent study by the World Health Organization, one in six people worldwide feels lonely.

That’s the foundation for the headline. How can they make it about Germany? They support that study with German numbers but there is nothing about a specific German epidemic. A bit ironic for an article that warns about the AfD mindset.

Germany sees loneliness epidemic among young people

That’s also a trap but I think the quote refers to something else.

Do you remember that they put the focus on the candidates because from that election on they were supposed to be taken?

The point is not that the largest group has to be taken but that the parliament itself should choose the president. The current modus was acceptable when the EU had no power. Now the EU can create regulations that become law.

There is still time.

There is even time to browse some more lemmy first.

Supposedly there was a ruling in California that made them responsible.

In September 2018, Weber announced his candidacy (Spitzenkandidat) for the post of the President of the European Commission for the 2019 European election.[13] (Under the unofficial Spitzenkandidat system, the leader of the European party that commands the largest coalition in the European Parliament subsequent to an election to the European Parliament is likely to become the European Commission president.[5][6])

Weber’s European People’s Party won a plurality of seats in the European Parliament in May 2019, thus making him the lead candidate to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission unless the Spitzenkandidat system was abandoned.[5] On 28 May, leaders of EU governments tasked European Council President Donald Tusk with leading the negotiations with members of the European Parliament and national leaders to pick a new European Commission President at an EU summit in late June 2019.[7] Tusk hinted that Weber was the “lead candidate.”[7] This did not materialise with Ursula von der Leyen, a fellow member of the European People’s Party, being appointed president.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Weber

Haven’t found it mentioned on her page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen

Seeing all of the problems we solved on reddit years ago is honestly kind of sad.

How were they solved?

Can you distinguish between a message and a messenger? Of course they have further, dangerous plans. But the suggestion at first sounds good, which is to be expected. From the article:

The now-public roadmap includes proposals to strip power from the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. It also calls for renaming the EU to the “European Community of Nations.” Power, according to the document, should return to the individual nation states of Europe.

“These proposals essentially amount to the complete dismantling of the European Commission, which would be reduced to handling only trivial matters,” explains Szabolcs Panyi, the journalist who obtained the document.

Nieuwsuur also spoke with one of the Polish authors of the plan, Zbigniew Przybyłowski of the conservative Ordo Iuris Institute: “We are calling for the restoration of democracy, freedom, and the sovereignty of nations. You could call that a power shift.”

The arguments:

Why would a scaleback to national states not be democratic?

In short, exactly because - as you say yourself -it is a ‘scaleback’ and a ‘limited role.’

We need to go forward as a larger EU would also be stronger as single national states.

Those are two things, power and democracy.

You are willing to get more power while not caring about democracy. If the EU moves forward as is, there will be less democracy.

It could even be false flag. What if the Heritage Foundation wants that concentration of power?

Why do we need it? The EU started as a project for a free market. Even if we need a strong military we can do that without all the other concentration of power.

you refer to the Heritage Foundation as an institution to develop democracy

I didn’t. I was talking about their suggestion. I hope you are not arguing in bad faith.

Why would a scaleback to national states not be democratic?

Das alles, um sich mit 1000 Soldaten an einer Strafexpedition von 50.000 Soldaten zu beteiligen.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vereinigte_acht_Staaten

Erstaunlich ist, dass wir kurz vor einer Neuauflage stehen, diesmal aber China technologisch fast den Anschluss geschafft hat.

Interessant sind auch die Kapitulationsbedingungen:

1. Die chinesische Regierung muss sich öffentlich für die Morde an ausländischen Diplomaten (neben Ketteler auch der japanische Gesandtschaftssekretär Graf Akira Sugiyama) entschuldigen und ein Denkmal für Ketteler („Ketteler-Bogen“) errichten.

als besonders demütigend eingeschätzter, Punkt war die sogenannte „Deutsche Sühnemission“. Der chinesische Prinz Zaifeng, Vater des letzten Kaisers Puyi, musste sich persönlich und auf Knien robbend in Berlin für den Mord an Ketteler entschuldigen.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxeraufstand#Boxerprotokoll

Why would a scaleback to national states not be democratic? They were democratic in the past.

Do you remember that the parliament was supposed to select the candidate but they changed it back after everybody had voted? It was within the legal framework but against the spirit of democracy.

With just having read the summary, I would be happy with the limited role that the Heritage foundation suggests.

The Europe of regions sounds also interesting.

I think we need a debate that is expected to last years to come up with a good system. There are reasons for the current structure that are still valid. We can keep going for a while, but we should keep in mind that the influence of the public was minimized.

A quick improvement could come from adopting the fediverse for the EU. It should be easy for citizens to participate in debates.

the current US government leaves no doubt about that

We are talking about WW3. A bit of distraction is to be expected.

If Obama had said that Europe should tripple its military budget to fight Russia while US fights China, would we have agreed?

Trump turning the US into a threat makes us spend it voluntarily.

The president is a reality show star. It’s a show.

This is backwards. It’s the US that will defend their hegemony in 2027. The EU will be involved because we are American allies and will take care of Russia.

If economies grow like they do, China will take over without war. They have no reason to fight.

It’s eight nation army without Russia again. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance

If you argue like that then we only need a king because there were kings who did great for their country.

It’s a great mistake to ignore the lack of democracy just because the wrong people point it out.

You need an argument for why the commission is still democratic, not just a list of benefits, no matter how good. Otherwise you confirm that it is not democratic.

Right, who could make that judgement? And everybody voting under the influence of propaganda is also not democratic.

So what is the moral thing to do?

We like democracy, F*** off

Would you say the EU is democratic? It’s the one thing they got right, that the EU is undermining democracy. The European Commission are representatives of representatives. Van der Leyen was a backroom deal.