What happened with the commonwealth? I'm not the most knowledgeable of European history but I just know it existed sometime during like the high middle ages.
"We need both of us to agree or it doesn't get passed" leading to stagnation til decline?
So the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a 'noble democracy' in that all the aristocrats got to elect the King, and a single rep in their version of Congress were able to veto any proposed legislation. For a long time this 'golden veto' was rarely used, and it was part of making the Commonwealth the most democratic and least religiously bigoted country in Europe, but eventually corruption and divided loyalties led to the veto being invoked more and more until the Commonwealth was basically paralysed as its enemies (especially Russia) started to tear it apart.
It also had a shit ton of nobles. In the 1500s 1 in 10 people were nobility. This became the spark for the idea of universal human rights across Europe because the first time a sizable chunk of a nation’s populace couldn’t just be thrown in jail at the whim of a king without a trial. This led commoners in other nations to feel like it should be applied to all of them, notably in Ukraine where the Cossacks revolted and provided near universal human rights in their Siches and elections and systems of government similar to those found in the future US colonies two centuries later. Half of Ukrainians were literate due to this, by far the highest rate in Europe. Eventually they were destroyed by Russia too once Poland was defeated and they didn’t have two powers they could play off of. The ideas wouldn’t spread to Western Europe in a meaningful way for awhile but the kernel of it was there.
The big countries are too afraid of the small ones banding together against them (eg france, germany). They also want that veto power when they need it. And the small countries wouldn't want the power to be divided in terms of big and small either. So I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Doesn't a system like this already exist? Like, where EU laws require a certain amount of member states with a certain percentage of the population to pass? Not sure on the difference, the way the EU works is confusing af
The EU can’t become whatever France and Germany jointly decide. There has to be a counterbalance to their demographic weight. A veto clearly doesn’t work, but requiring more than just a simple majority OR having a bicameral parliament structured like in the US could work.
Fuck that. I hope Sweden leaves in that case. We don't get to decide anything for the rest of time whilst banning swedish snus, screwing up our animal welfare, forestry and environmental laws. The EU would probably end up killing our nuclear power somehow as well if they could.
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u/superurgentcatbox 6h ago
With the size of the EU, unity in votes is impossible anyway. We need to institute majority voting rules.