The Guardian: EU silence over Catalan leader’s call for action speaks volumes

“However, Francisco de Borja Lasheras, the head of the Madrid office of the European council on foreign relations in Madrid, describes the EU’s role as positive. He said the EU has helped to uphold the rule of law in Catalonia, after “a wafer-thin majority” in the Catalan parliament “rode roughshod” over parliamentary rules to introduce the referendum.”

Probably no sentence sums up better why the EU is not a democratic institution. When the people of a EU nation votes for something that is against the interests of the EU elite, it is not “democratic”. This is the same argument being offered by Remainers in the UK. It was also the argument used by the Germans to crush the attempt of the Greek government to challenge its debt burden: law takes precedent over democracy.

The EU promulgates the rule of institutions and what these institutions interpret as the law (which is adapted to the situation and driven by a neo-liberal ideology). Most Europeans understand democracy as the will of the people.

This raises a question that has never been properly posed: Can it be that Brexit was also the result of the British people knowing that the EU is an anti-democratic. The referendum in Scotland was a model for democracy, both the process and how citizens dealt with the result. Why is a simple democratic exercise like this so difficult for the EU?

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