Or how that is in any way related to the other several instances of "ever closer union" wording that France signed up to.

This is about the vote on the EU Constitution in the early 2000s during which both French and Dutch people voted against. Later the EU decided to pass it without a referendum to side step this "democracy issue". Something you would have know about if you actually understood the topic.

So no, "even closer union" is not something that most europeans want, especially not in the current climate of corruption and fuckups by the commission.

That’s not what happened. the French parliament ratified the treaty

Your problem is with the sovereign democratically elected parliament who ignored their own referendum.

https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/13/scrutins/jo0083.asp

(Same in NL)

"The EU" is our elected governments, not some third-party institution. An extra vote on top of the election was always foolish.

> "The EU" is our elected governments

Is that why the EU MEP can't propose laws?

Is that why the Commission can ignore the MEP's votes?

Also, many European governments have not been elected by people voting for them but by people voting against their opponent. Hardly a vote of confidence.

> An extra vote on top of the election was always foolish.

Yes, so foolish to ask people their opinion. If only we could have one strong man or woman decide everything.

The Commission is literally our elected government's representatives.

It's not some outside power. It's people our governments send there. And it's exactly the same amount of democratic as a ministership is.

> Yes, so foolish to ask people their opinion.

The average voter doesn't know everything about everything. That's the whole point of representative democracy, to elect a representative to deal with the intricacies of governance. That's how most democratic countries in the world are structured.

> The Commission is literally our elected government's representatives.

Oh, von der Leyen was elected?

Mertz represents 28,52% of the German people who voted. Who is he actually representing? Definitely not the German people, that's for sure.

> The average voter doesn't know everything about everything. That's the whole point of representative democracy, to elect a representative to deal with the intricacies of governance.

No, representatives are there to represent the opinions of their electorate. It has nothing to do with knowledge.

Representatives have teams of assistants that actually do have knowledge. No representative is writing laws themselves. That's why you see laws being lifted straight from industry lobby groups' legal teams.

In the U.K., Starmer won a landslide victory with 34% of the vote.

Sunak was not elected by the people. Neither was Truss, Johnson, or May

Cameron got 36% of the vote when he became PM. Brown wasn’t elected. Blair did well with 43%, but before him Major wasn’t elected.

Democracies are flawed, they’re just better than other systems we’ve had in the past.

How exactly do the commission ignore the votes?

MEPs have the same power to put laws through s back benchers in the Westminster system. They have the same power to evict the executive as the house does in America.