Turns out, if you don’t sacrifice cities on the car altar and plan for quality if life instead, children can in fact play on the streets. The Netherlands show it.

The Commission is accountable to the directly elected European Parliament, by the fact that the latter can vote the former out of office anytime.

In that case, if you choose to include the Commission, there would be three bodies. There is a reason the “trilogue” is called that way. The third body is the Council of the European Union which has basically equal standing to the European Parliament but represents the member states, while the EP represents the voters directly. Both can bring in amendments and veto or agree on a piece of legislation (while the Commission can’t, its influence is with initiation and the initial draft).

What the SVP wanted to get adpoted would force the end of freedom of movement with the EU if population in Switzerland only mildly increases (even if that were to happen purely due to domestic population growth btw). In that case there are guillotine clauses that would automatically kill major treaties with the EU, including the one on being in the Single Market. This is pretty much automatic, as Switzerland would violate the conditions based on which it is part of the Single Market and one-sidedly significantly change the deal. Freedom of Movement is, after all, a majory pillar of the Single Market itself.

The Commission President is literally “elected” by the European Parliament, the word in the treaties. The Commission as a whole is facing a vote of consent. If the European Parliament rejects candidates, also besides the Commission President, they have to go or the Commission won’t be getting into power. This is not merely theoretical, there is precedence for that. There are also interviews of each Commission candidate in the European Parliament and those are usually way harder than anything, any minister candidate in Austria, for example, would ever face.

Equally as important is the fact that the European Parliament can vote the Commission out of office anytime as well.

Which means nothing if they are not elected by the European Parliament by a vote of consent. The Commission can be also fired anytime by the European Parliament anytime later, if it loses support in the chamber.

I think you confused something here. While I agree that it is nonsense to claim that the Commission “is the EU”, it is not really a legislative body. While it is true that the Commission “initiates” legislation, it is an executive institution and such work is more in line with national governments drafting new legislation (even if there commonly Parliaments then rubber stamp a legislative initiative based on that). The two legislative institutions of the EU are the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (comprised of ministers from each national government), the amend, veto or agree on legislation together, with committee work etc, as one would expect from legislatives.

The EU Commission is elected by the European Parliament into power and can be fired by the European Parliament anytime. Pretty much standard for governments in parliamentary democracies. If that isn’t democratic, you don’t consider parliamentary democracies democratic in general?

The Commission is unique in the way that it alone can initiate legislation but the right to initiative is routinely blown out of proportion. In most countries this power of their parliaments is mostly facade nowadays, because the governments there are actually drafting legislation and if needed parliaments just rubber stamp the initiative. This is further watered down because both Council and Parliament can propose legislative initiative to the Commission, which the Commission usually follows through. While the Commission can try to prevent legal initiative, it can do little to prevent the amending of current legislative proposals in the works. This is actually relevant for Stop Killing Games, if you followed the news of the initiative.

I get the feeling you are not really aware of how the EU functions. Despotism is absolutist rule, calling that the EU or any EU institution is pretty absurd and detached from reality. There is hardly a political entity, less centralised than the EU, still capable of routinely drafting common legislation. Also, while there is a democratic deficit (but hardly larger than in many other democracies nowadays), the Commission is elected into power by the directly elected European Parliament and can’t pass ordinary legislation without a majority in the EP in support of it and the latter having the power to amend the hell out of it, if it doesn’t outright veto it straight away.

Switzerland is in the EU’s Single Market and has other important agreements in place with the EU. A key reason for that referendum was the SVP’s ambition to force Switzerland out of the Single market. They can’t get the Swiss to agree to that so they try it in hidden ways, this time with playing the anti-foreigner card, while not mentioning that this is designed in reality to force Switzerland out of the Single Market. So yes, this referndum had a lot to do with the EU. The majority of Swiss voters was not fooled though, again. But also this time, the SVP will not take no for an answer and will try again, with a different construct.

They won’t be missed, destroyer of game franchises, studios and pioneer in anti-consumer stuff and transforming games into gambling, children welcome.

I doubt, any source would you convince you of Russia waging an Imperialist war, given your previous posts. Which leads me back to my initial point. I oppose every imperialism and don’t play “gimme evidence, no that doesn’t count” towards one side.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220627050935/https://www.bbc.com/news/61790625

Plenty of reports of Russia shipping grain from occupied regions as soon as they got their hands on it. I didn’t know that was considered contested information. Nor that Ukraine being prime agricultural land needing evidence either.

The SVP sold it as anti-foreigner thing but it was really about forcing Switzerland out of the Single Market, a Swiss eqivalent for Brexit. Again. The SVP doesn’t take no for an answer.

Yes (big agricultural resources, much more moderate climate than most of Russia, Russia wasted no time with taking possession of those resources in occupied regions and selling off the produced and sucking up the revenue) but it is also trying to colonise territory and get more Lebensraum for Russians, including ethnic cleansing of people refusing assimilation, filtration camps etc

Stuttgart 21 is terribly late and over budget but it is a reasonable project in my opinion, even if many see that differently. There are some issues with it but overall it will be a considerable upgrade. Very substantial progress has already been made.

That said, Germany is a really negative model for rail development in Europe. It is still on another planet compared to the US though.

I don’t think it is (only) corruption. I blame two things, on one side there is no meaningful and certainly no long term political support for high speed rail infrastructure, neither in politics nor among voters on the other side legislation is seriously anti-rail development. Laws are tough on any infrastructure projects, causing overheads larger than the actual construction costs (possibly even multifold larger) but they are especially hostile against rail projects and even against operating rail.

Geography isn’t even part of that equation, it is an entirely different debate. (California is not so different from Spain, dry, mix of mountains and flats etc)

So you also oppose Russian Imperialism and its current blood soaked war of conquest, like also with other imperialists?

I don’t like imperialism, no matter the side. You seem to disagree with my stance.