Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat View Post
A good candidate? A European Sarah Palin I'd say, but with brains. Vaira has never held an elected office. She is a Canadian professor of linguistics, who briefly held the mostly ceremonial function of president of Latvia.


She may impress the Eurosceptic crowd with her demand that the position of EU chairman/president must be an elected office, an open process, but let's not forget that she herself was not elected president in a transparant election either, but appointed by parliament. As is the case in most European systems.

When's the last time Britain elected a PM? Never, of course, because that would mean a semi-presidential system.



Two things:

- Unless one wants a presidential system, as in France or the US, a president / PM is not directly elected. I find it most peculiar that so many people who dissaprove of a directly elected head of their domestic government, should insist on a direct election of EU offices.

- Again, it is the anti-federalists who dissaprove of a direct election of an EU chairman. As they should, as an anti-federalist. Because an elected EU President has a direct mandate from the electorate. Which places her in a position of direct power against national governments. This means an end to the EU as an organisation of supranational states, and turns the EU into some sort of confederacy.


So: know what you are asking for when demanding an elected EU president. Don't just mewl that the process is undemocratic, while simultaneously demanding that it be thus.
And don't forget the likes of Furunculus is constantly telling us he wants an EFTA style arrangement when infact what he really means is an EEA arangement. The Anti EU crowd would really have summit to complain about then as the EEA must accept certain points of EU law without the ability to contribute to its crafting at all no ifs or buts. I may be sceptic but I aint no fool.