At 1:23 PM +0200 9/15/21, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
Dear David,
please, fact-check; this is incorrect:
the most powerful decision-making body in the EU is
the European Commission is comprised of unelected officials
You may see deficits in the following procedure, but there are in
fact elections and democratic confirmations:
"The president-elect selects potential Vice-Presidents and
Commissioners based on suggestions from EU countries. The list of
nominees has to be approved by all EU heads of state or government,
meeting in the European Council. ... Following Parliament's vote[*],
the Commissioners are appointed by the European Council. ..."
(* Remember that, in autumn 2019, the European Parliament rejected
the Romanian and Hungarian commissioners-elect first proposed by U.
von der Leyen, due to "conflicts of interest.")
If the Commission is ruled, as you claim, by a "neo-liberal
orthodoxy", then this selection process shows that the problem is
much bigger than just the assembly of Commissioners. (And arguably
the EU of 2021 is not any more the EU of 2010.)
Moreover, the "most powerful decision-making body in the EU" is
clearly the European Council:
"The members of the European Council are the heads of state or
government of the 27 EU member states, the European Council
President and the President of the European Commission."
As we have seen in the last years, the role of the European
Parliament has been strengthened gradually, if too slowly.
Otherwise, thank you for pointing out some of the problematic
concepts and levels of argumentation in the reference text!
Regards,
-a
Am 15.09.21 um 11:57 schrieb d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk:
Thanks Paolo for this very interesting article. Just a few
questions that I imagine will be answered by reading the book.
I am unclear what is meant here by 'the state'. Is it
interchangeable with 'government'? Does the argument that
neoliberalism (market fundamentalism) is being replaced by
'neostatism' mean that you see neoliberalism as a kind of polity or
set of constitutional arrangements rather than an economic
orthodoxy?
To take one example the most powerful decision-making body in the
EU is the European Commission is comprised of unelected officials
whose principal task is to ensure that no national election of a
member state will ever overturn the parameters of the neo-liberal
orthodoxy. Anyone who doubts this should remember what happened to
Greece in the debt crisis of 2009/10. So do you see the Commission
as an example of a 'neostate'? Or is it something else again? Is
the EU Commission included in the book?
I am curious whether your analysis of the neo-state addresses the
current position of 'liberal democracy'which (for better or for
worse) is in a (over used word) crisis. It seems to me that the
liberal view of the state continues to trade on the old the
increasingly tired old ruse of making a virtue of obscuring the
answer to the question, who governs? them or us, people or
government. This deliberate ambiguity is the beating heart of
classical liberalism and seen as a way holding the line between
tyranny vs mob rule. But its effect is simply to keep the status
quo in place. This dubious magic trick (once described as the
manufacturing of consent) has apart at the seams to be replaced by
a techno/populist logic that depends on the 'manufacture of
dissent'.
None of this hall of mirrors would matter if we were not facing a
climate emergency that needs decision, action and immediate deep
change.
I am looking forward to reading the book.
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