About fucking time. Fat pricks like Orban shouldn't be able to hold up 26 other nations because of their extra-national dick-sucking abilities.
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
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Why we allow clearly undemocratic countries like Hungary under Orban to remain in the EU, is a much better question than asking why we should allow large countries to overrule the legitimate concerns of smaller democratic countries.
A thought on this:
A fair system (and our current system, in theory) is based on the principle of “one person, one vote.”
Accordingly, the large countries would have to have significantly more votes than the small ones, in proportion to their population.
Because right now, I don’t quite understand why the vote of a Luxembourg citizen is worth as much as that of 100,000 Germans. In my opinion, that has little to do with fairness... at least as long as the large countries are still footing the bulk of the budget.
To put it bluntly: If, in a village of 100 people, only one person had the right to a personal veto, we certainly wouldn’t be talking about an equitable, fair system.
The problem is that in the system you propose, smaller countries would have near zero incentive to participate because they'd always be overridden by larger countries.
Agreed that there may be issues such as Orban, but that's a poor excuse to completely overwhelm other small countries' opinions.
The problem is that in the system you propose, smaller countries would have near zero incentive to participate because they'd always be overridden by larger countries.
I get the problem and I don't claim that my thoughts would be a ideal solution.
Currently, however, we face the opposite problem: The larger countries are increasingly being asked why they bear the lion’s share of the costs only to then have their sovereignty restricted by countries like Hungary (EU law takes precedence over national law).
Both problems—the lack of representation for both the small and the large countries—pose a threat to the alliance in their own ways.
I don’t know which of the two is more serious… but intuitively, I would say that a withdrawal by the large countries would hit the alliance much harder than one by the small ones, since a large portion of the budget (from which small states in particular benefit greatly) would then be lost.
The problem with large countries potentially leaving is that everybody loses out on global power impact. It would only be viable, imho, of the difference of opinions would be vast and would constantly have a negative impact.
After all, nobody agrees with somebody else all of the time.
A lot of other things would need to change first in the EU before we could even consider this objection to be relevant, and aside from that it is common to have minority protections or required super-majority rules that also in theory give a minority greater power than what their number alone would give them.
But as it stands, the EU is a voluntary association of states and not a federal state, and it would have never been so successful if it were something else. In fact, it would likely desintegrate relatively quickly if the people that push for less independence of the states get their way. Most likely it would devolve into a rump union with France and Germany, plus a few client states that are economically too dependent to leave. Proponents of this call that a union of two speeds, but in reality it would be the death of the EU.
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If we are not able to deal with countries falling the path of hungary* and our only response is to kick them out of the union, then we shall accept that the EU is condemned to dissapear.
Picture a hungary that is still rulled by orban. You kick them out, then what? Slovakia... poland? What about those countries that are constantly on the verge of falling into putin's hand? We have to be better than that.
It's a fair point. It's also much easier to be all Billy Big-Balls "just kick them out" when it's Hungary - but what about when Germany elects AfD or France elects Le Pen; do we kick them out too?
A federation of democracies needs to be resilient to the fact that democracies don't always elect people we like. Kicking members out every time that happens is not reslience, it's a deathwish.
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Monkey Paws Finger crawls: And it first will be used to enforce mass observation stuff like chat control?
which is pushed by META, PALANTIR, and other surveillence techbros , because thier AI needs a new customers.
the power of veto seems weird, surely a super majority to let countries in or kick them out (75%) and a majority to pass laws.
the small states have the same say as big states is a problem at the national level as well, its an anachronistic hang over I mean its more beneficial for a tiny nation to be in the EU then out.. Switzerland taking the piss is another problem :)
Unfortunately the principle of degressive proportionality of votes per country to population of country is enshrined in EU law. It's free to interpret that principle as it wishes but it can't do away with it. My favourite proposal got axed in the 2010s: it would have given citizens two votes, one for a national list and one for a transnational list - I think the idea was that 75% of seats would be filled by winners of national lists and 25% by those of transnational lists. Unfortunately it died along with many other proposed reforms.
At the same time Germany is totally fine to veto the EU-Israel trade agreement suspending. In this question Germany looks like two arms for the "unanimity among the bloc's 27 countries" for questions related to Israel war crimes and genocide in Gaza.
The suspension of the trade agreement just requires a qualified majority and not unanimity. In other words Germany can not veto it and has not vetoed it. Hence the article uses the word reject, as Germany did not vote for the suspension. If only Germany did that, then the agreement would have been suspended, but as even the article you use clear shows, Italy did not support it as well.
Does your point not support abandoning anonymity? Perhaps Germany does not want to impose its Israel-related policy on other states by veto, while maintaining its own point of view?
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This comment is incorrect. Not Germany nor any other country has veto rights on this agreement. They rejected it, using their normal vote.
IDK about this. Johann Wadephul is part of the christian dems. I hope it's at least a large majority because speaking as an american: simple majorities can really fuck your life up if you let them.
I would feel a lot better about this if there were more progressives currently in power, but it backslid last round of elections and is set to backslide again next time based solely on foreign election funds and psyops coming in.
Yeah, your problem is not a simple majority for normal laws, but a fundamentally broken election system.
The EU is in a totally different situation.
A technically better election system than the USA allowed the Nazi party to take control at the end of the Weimar Republic.
A technically better system saw huge gains for the AfD recently.
A technically better system saw France throw shock elections and end up with another nonconfidence vote.
The only technically better system which was pleasantly surprising to me was Australia, going Labor recently.
look into switzerlands system, almost perfect imo. I am extreamly greatful for it
Happiest nation on earth almost every year for decades.
So much broken in the US system. A supposed representative democracy, yet the president is treated like a king - they can unilaterally make and abolish laws, can pardon anyone at their sole discretion, even their wife is called "the first lady".
simple majorities can really fuck your life up if you let them.
Most policy fields in the EU already have qualified majority or "reinforced" qualified majority voting and according to the article Wadephul is specifically calling for qualified majority.
I really don't see where concerns about simple majorities come from.
Nice, glad to hear it.
I really don’t see where concerns about simple majorities come from.
The policy not yet being in effect means we should be vocal about any changes we want and any we don't want. I was clear and explicit about wanting a large majority.
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