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Maybe an interesting solution would be to have EU "President" elections, for Ursula's spot but expand the powers a bit and have it be an actual democratic election.
Each country puts forward a candidate (perhaps choosen during the EU parliament elections) they campaign for a month or two and then the whole of EU votes for president, perhaps with ranked choice voting and maybe it favors people who bow out in order to join the cabinet of their preferred cabinet.
This person should then on top of Ursula's powers receive the ability to brake the veto (so we can curbstomp the ability of Hungary and whoever elects a Putin stooge next to block the agenda for the whole EU) and perhaps they can have, as their first order of business the establishment of EU army to legitimize the position a bit more.
We have a huge leadership problem and perhaps if we gave the actual people of EU the ability to choose someone from a wide variety of candidates who have to campaign for everyone not just their national interests we might even ignite a passion for European politics in the population.
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I'm hesitant to create a new powerful position, given how those roles are working in other places. Creating a new position just to get Le Pen elected for it would cause a massive amount of damage. Ranked-choice voting would be a must, but I'm still sceptical it would prevent the worst outcomes or be agreed on. Moving power away from locals will always be unpopular. Hard to see how smaller countries would ever win the position, even with support from different political and regional blocs. Also, limiting the position to foreign policy, or so, would make it much weaker, though maybe more agreeable. Maybe if more than one were elected into the small council, it would help to avoid my fears, but suddenly everyone will want a guaranteed spot.
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Maybe something like every 10 million people per country (rounded up) being a vote could make it less sensitive to the highly populated nations. Where small ones get a full vote even without hitting 10 million. Though not certain something like that is required.
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On December 08 2025 02:04 Yurie wrote:
Maybe something like every 10 million people per country (rounded up) being a vote could make it less sensitive to the highly populated nations. Where small ones get a full vote even without hitting 10 million. Though not certain something like that is required.
That sounds like a weird compromise. Why not just have 1 person, 1 vote? Why should Luxemburg get the same amount of voting power as the Czech Republic? 1 person, 1 vote is just so much more sensible.
That said, I think any reform of the EU president's role would also have to come with an overall reform of EU decision making. I'm not sure what would be a good idea.
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Its a case of wishing for something to be gone, only to realise the void left behind afterwards.
The EU had a leader in Merkel, and she was hated for it. It was 'Germany bullying the rest of the EU' ect.
And then we got the useless sack of potato's Scholz and Macron who was doing his best 1938 Chamberlain impersonation.
You talk about holding elections for an EU leader but the reality on the ground is that Europe tends to go where its major countries (France and Germany now that the UK is out) go. You can have an EU leader from Portugal but if France and Germany say 'we don't think so' then nothing of substance is going to happen.
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On December 08 2025 02:26 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2025 02:04 Yurie wrote:
Maybe something like every 10 million people per country (rounded up) being a vote could make it less sensitive to the highly populated nations. Where small ones get a full vote even without hitting 10 million. Though not certain something like that is required. That sounds like a weird compromise. Why not just have 1 person, 1 vote? Why should Luxemburg get the same amount of voting power as the Czech Republic? 1 person, 1 vote is just so much more sensible. That said, I think any reform of the EU president's role would also have to come with an overall reform of EU decision making. I'm not sure what would be a good idea.
Was mostly targeting this complaint.
Hard to see how smaller countries would ever win the position, even with support from different political and regional blocs.
By making major population powers have more power in European Parliament and less proportional power in the other power seat. Though they don't really get over represented much in the current setup.
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You guys looking at the US, Russia, China and so on and think what the EU is lacking is a "strong" leader?
Seriously?
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Strong leaders are a two-edged sword.
Strong leaders who do good stuff are awesome, amazing, and can greatly improve their country.
Strong leaders who do bad, evil or idiotic stuff are horrifying and can greatly ruin their country.
Sadly, strength does not necessarily correlate with aptitude or benevolence. And history has shown that it is very hard to have a system with exclusively competent and benevolent strong leaders.
And malevolent or criminally incompetent strong leaders can have such massive negative impacts that it is usually not worth risking those for the chance to get a competent and benevolent strong leader.
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I agree with Velr, why even think about an european president when we not even the european parlament works properly.
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On December 08 2025 20:44 Simberto wrote:
Strong leaders are a two-edged sword.
Strong leaders who do good stuff are awesome, amazing, and can greatly improve their country.
Strong leaders who do bad, evil or idiotic stuff are horrifying and can greatly ruin their country.
Sadly, strength does not necessarily correlate with aptitude or benevolence. And history has shown that it is very hard to have a system with exclusively competent and benevolent strong leaders.
And malevolent or criminally incompetent strong leaders can have such massive negative impacts that it is usually not worth risking those for the chance to get a competent and benevolent strong leader.
I think a chosen president is fine in times when society is relatively unpolarized. No extreme will ever really win, but a leader will be chosen who is slightly to the left or slightly to the right of the center, which is also what the vast majority of the population agree with. See, for instance, France over the last few decades.
However, society is increasingly polarised. And having a powerful president is a problem in that case. Look at the US: over half the voters thought Trump's first term was good enough to vote him in for a second term. Meanwhile the rest of America hates his guts. Similarly the people who voted for Trump also think Clinton and Biden are part of a cannibalistic pedophilic satanic pizza cult, and therefore even if orange man were literally Hitler they'd be justified in voting for him.
When discourse reaches that level of disconnect, any single leader is going to be problematic to a large part of the population. But a democratically chosen president with a fair amount of executive power isn't inherently bad. It's just a terrible idea in today's polarised society. There's a real possibility that Bardella wins the next presidential elections in France. A truly appalling idea. I don't know how you fight fascism when more than half the population could be okay with it (or alternatively, deluded by misinformation campaigns of foreign actors into thinking the other side are Stalinists, so even worse).
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OK, good inputs on all ends, thank you.
What I think the ideal scenario would be and why I think it might be a good idea, overall:
1. EU is not as polarized as US, we agree, as a collection of countries on a lot and most denizens of Europe don't really have the American wedge issues or their political duopoly rotting their brains
2. Most EU citizens think that their country's politicians suck, at least their political parties, I believe that if someone like, let's say Draghi was put forward and did a good campaign, it would be a good way to transcend the apathy most people have towards their own national politicians
3. I think there is a huge appetite for "reasonable politics" in EU, we have all been seeing across the world how extremes fuck up the world, someone who has a platform of "we have it relatively OK but let's fix these things that we all agree suck and present a unified front to the world which will make us rich and safe in the long term" might fall on fertile ground
I think a lot of people's biggest problem with EU is that it's perceived as being dominated by certain countries and that this makes the processes of it undemocratic, if a new, clearly very democratic process was given as a counterweight and put on top of the current layer of technocratic bureaucracy I see that as a good thing.
Of course, there are risks, but I think that the rewards outweigh them dramatically.
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Imho first and foremost the EU has to decide and be clear about what it wants to be, what it's final form ideally should be.
Once that is done, have votes in the member states about who is on board and go on with the ones that are willing, while remaining open for others to join.
Basically the 2 speed EU... Not exactly a new concept but I don't see another way out of the issues it faces.
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I think it's a very bad time to push the idea of creating a European president or any other centralization. Eurosceptics will claim it's an attack on their countries and they know better how to run them than some "power hungry" bureaucrats like Timmermans or Juncker (even though they likely wouldn't get elected in the first place).
Maybe it would be a good idea to play it safe and start with something safe like European ombudsman elections. I mean giving someone with a face resources and a strong mandate to raise important matters before the European institutions.
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Is it an appropriate time to revisit this question?
On October 13 2024 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:
For clarity, I was talking about my original inquiry: How fascist can the US get before Europeans demand their politicians cut off relations/start sanctions/etc?
Doesn't seem like Europeans have given any thought to how far they would let Trump go before drawing some sort of red line for themselves when they would demand their government do something. Doesn't seem like there's some obvious redline for their governments either.
Could end up with Trump and Putin forcing a peace negotiation in Ukraine and make a deal with European right wing parties that they can get credit for the windfall of the dropping of sanctions and rebuilding/modernizing what's left of Ukraine.
I suppose that would be more provocative to Europeans than any crime against humanity Trump could commit domestically?
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Northern Ireland27264 Posts
It’s not realistically happening outside of something insane.
You know this, you’re just scolding Europeans for lacking your purity, as per.
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I think this kind of big election might be a thing that would allow the EU to choose a path.
Maybe someone like Draghi with his "pragmatic federalism" presenting a path forward which represents more integration, a united front, even a EU military etc. and then you have someone like, I don't know, I'll pull it out of my ass but like Yanis Varufakis who might have very different, economic populist ideas while not necessarily wanting to dismantle the whole project.
Sure, there'd be a real chance that EU citizenship has moved so far to the right that they buy into some Orban like moron and we all get fucked, but IMO that's the risk worth taking if we are going to have EU survive long term.
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On December 09 2025 03:27 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2025 03:14 GreenHorizons wrote:Is it an appropriate time to revisit this question? On October 13 2024 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:
For clarity, I was talking about my original inquiry: How fascist can the US get before Europeans demand their politicians cut off relations/start sanctions/etc?
Doesn't seem like Europeans have given any thought to how far they would let Trump go before drawing some sort of red line for themselves when they would demand their government do something. Doesn't seem like there's some obvious redline for their governments either.
Could end up with Trump and Putin forcing a peace negotiation in Ukraine and make a deal with European right wing parties that they can get credit for the windfall of the dropping of sanctions and rebuilding/modernizing what's left of Ukraine.
I suppose that would be more provocative to Europeans than any crime against humanity Trump could commit domestically?
It’s not realistically happening outside of something insane. You know this, you’re just scolding Europeans for lacking your purity, as per.
While from my perspective things are already pretty insane, I'm not scolding. I'm asking what would qualify as "something insane" (since it isn't anything so far) for our European posters?
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On December 09 2025 03:37 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2025 03:27 WombaT wrote:On December 09 2025 03:14 GreenHorizons wrote:Is it an appropriate time to revisit this question? On October 13 2024 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:
For clarity, I was talking about my original inquiry: How fascist can the US get before Europeans demand their politicians cut off relations/start sanctions/etc?
Doesn't seem like Europeans have given any thought to how far they would let Trump go before drawing some sort of red line for themselves when they would demand their government do something. Doesn't seem like there's some obvious redline for their governments either.
Could end up with Trump and Putin forcing a peace negotiation in Ukraine and make a deal with European right wing parties that they can get credit for the windfall of the dropping of sanctions and rebuilding/modernizing what's left of Ukraine.
I suppose that would be more provocative to Europeans than any crime against humanity Trump could commit domestically?
It’s not realistically happening outside of something insane. You know this, you’re just scolding Europeans for lacking your purity, as per. While from my perspective things are already pretty insane, I'm not scolding. I'm asking what would qualify as "something insane" (since it isn't anything so far) for our European posters?
Military intervention on opponent side in a near European conflict. The US can do whatever it wants in Venezuela, there is enough good will built up over the decades to take 2-3 of those.
Pogroms of scale larger than the Chinese ones currently ongoing. Basically putting 10-50 million people into camps where you expect most of them to die. Both US and EU trade with Israel that is much worse than the current US.
Active ongoing political support that is official for extremist parties in Europe. We traded with Russia for many years while they pretended not to be doing it.
Anything less than that will just see slow disconnection of systems. Stop accepting Visa/Mastercard, disconnect from Swift, stop buying in USD, ban US social media etc. None of that is direct sanctions per say, they are still a huge trading partner.
Basically you would slowly see a US-China relationship growing with EU as the historical US equivalent. Highly doubt the US would do anything that would require going further than that.
To summarize, the US is far from sanctions, too important of a trade partner that isn't doing anything extreme against the current world order. It is trending VERY badly but right now we just wait and see if the democracy collapses, goes more extreme or goes back to normal. No point burning relations yet. You need to get worse than China and Russia prior to Ukraine. Where Russia had multiple expansionist wars, they just weren't near enough to the EU.
Not certain going Handmaids Tale would be extreme enough. We trade with multiple Muslim countries that are somewhat extreme and has less to offer than the US.
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I think it's one thing to sanction/sever ties with the US and a very different one to actually put all this words and rhetoric in to action.
If EU actually actively tried to do anything to decouple itself the loss for American economy would be very, very significant and it would show very fast, and it should have done this the second that Trump got elected because him and his cronies literally wrote, in project 2025 that they don't consider EU an ally and there was no reason to think that they aren't going to act as if that was a fact.
The tragedy is that Europe doesn't seem willing to understand that US needs it more then we need the US, we have others to trade, both energy and goods, I honestly don't care if our main trading partner is China or the current US because to me they are at least on a level playing field as far as where I'd like to live less and which form of governance I prefer less, but at least China doesn't have the open contempt for EU that US has, at least China is not actively supporting and allying itself with belligerent countries like Israel and Rwanda, at least China is not signaling a ground invasion over bullshit pretenses like USA is with Venezuela or having Xi "joking" how Canadia is going to be annexed along with Greenland and Panama.
I hate the Chinese surveillance state, I hate what they are doing to Uighurs, I fucking hate they are propping up Russia against Ukraine and I hate the way they are playing games across Africa, but at the moment they are, to me, preferred to the USA of today who does many similar things or seems to be moving in the same direction at a rapid pace.
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Currently the US is set to have elections where Trump will get demolished, so the EU is just waiting for that to happen. If Trump stays in power despite losing elections that's probably a point where things would change. I'm sure most politicians in EU understand that once Trump loses power someone like him will probably get power back in 4 or 8 years, but I'm equally sure that most politicians act with the absolute certainty that in the middle to long term we are already fucked so it doesn't matter too much.
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EPT
