Well, I'm from Europe and I don't like most of the things that come out of Brussels. In fact, when polls are made it would seem majority share my view. Maybe then 'undemocratic' is not such a bad name for it?

It's tons of bureaucracy with very little democracy.

I think the majority don't have a clue what laws come out of the EU versus their own parliament.

The EU has about 33 thousand employees, this is hardly tons of bureaucracy, just UK local government has 2.3 million employees.

The EU Commission is regularly abused by any plurality of national governments to push for Europe-wide legislation that those governments want, but would not be able to enact nationally without significant voter backlash. So, they use European law as an excuse to say "See, we also do not want this, but we are forced to do so!". Same process as happens with international treaties like TPP or TTIP, which when signed would force numerous unpalatable changes to national laws.

Ed: And there's much of the reason for the bad rep of the EU inside of the EU. The rest (mostly in the UK) is due to Murdoch's personal interests, obviously.

A lot of local government are not strictly bureaucrats but are people providing services.

Bureaucracy services, mostly.

Teaching? Libraries? Rubbish collection? Street cleaning? Public health? Social care; adult social services, child protection social services?

Most of that isn't what people think when they hear bureaucracy.

All those services are surrounded by huge bureaucratic machines. As is any private company who wishes to make business.

you left out the most important..national defense...oh sorry, most of the EU dumped that on the US so it could afford all these social programs!

Do you even know most things that come out of Brussels? Your sentiment is shared by many people all over the world with regard to their own national governments as well. That doesn't make all these countries undemocratic.

A recent poll in the US shows that 65% of likely U.S voters think that their country is going in the wrong direction (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood...). And that doesn't even speak of the almost 50% of people who don't vote.

What is special about the EU is that national politicians and tabloid media love to use it as a scapegoat for everything that is wrong with our modern globalised world. That is especially true for the UK.

> That doesn't make all these countries undemocratic.

A few examples do show a blatant lack of democracy, though. In France, we had a referendum regarding the new European constitution. We refused it at 60% (not counting abstention, which by the way was relatively low). Then a dozen months later, the same constitution came back (sections were shuffled around, but it was mostly a copy-paste job). No referendum this time. It was submitted to the parliament instead. They said yes, despite indisputable evidence that the people did not want this. This is as undemocratic as it gets.

Elections don't make a country democratic. We need much stronger guarantees.

It was not undemocratic. Your parliament was democratically elected. It had a mandate to do things like ratifying new European treaties.

The problem was holding the referendum in the first place. Direct democracy does not work because it's a recipe for paralysis.

Democracy is supposed to be the power of the people. By definition. Moreover, most lay people will understand it that way.

When the government makes a decision that contradicts the will of the people, it is not democratic. Period. If the people really held the power, that decision wouldn't have been made in the first place.

The way the government was appointed doesn't matter, once you know of its actual decisions. Being democratically elected doesn't magically make all of your decisions democratic! Even if you stick to lawful decisions, I might add. Besides, there are a lot of ways for elected officials to have different interests than the general population.

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That said, "democratic" does not mean "good". It is quite possible (though unlikely in my personal opinion) that the will of the people was wrong, and that European treaty was a good thing. In which case it was a good thing to go against the will of the people.

Serious. I'm not saying this particular decision was bad. I'm just saying it was undemocratic.

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One last thing: you say our "democratically elected" parliament had, among other things, a mandate to ratifying European treaties. Only problem was, the entire political class wanted this particular treaty to happen. Very few thought otherwise. And those had other opinions about other subjects that often made them a big no-no for most people (extreme right and extreme left, mostly).

We did not have much choice when we elected our officials. It was like, this guy who wanted the treaty to happen, and that gal who also wanted the treaty to happen, and maybe that crazy fellow who did not want this, but had also a couple insane ideas we did not endorse.

Doesn't it? Did you check Switzerland?

Switzerland is ten times smaller than France, and in general the people who live there are far better off (GDP per capita is doubled between France and Switzerland ($90,000 vs $45,000)).

It's much easier to form a consensus when your constituents are all affluent. It's much easier to govern a small country than a big one.

Switzerland clearly works moderately well, but the barrier for success was far lower than for France.

> It's much easier to govern a small country than a big one.

Then what about making small countries? We could then federate the result. Let the small regions take care of what can be handled locally, and let the federation take care about the big stuff (army, foreign policy…).

You are misinformed, according to the regularly performed Eurobarometer polls (http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb82/eb82_en....), there is not a single poll since 2006 where more people had a negative view than a positive view of the EU.

It's possible to have different views of the EU and on Brussels. While on balance I put myself on pro-EU side of scales it doesn't mean I have positive view of the way the European Parliament is currently run.

Don't forget that politicians of every country tend to take the credit when the EU does something popular while they're quick to blame Brussels when poorly-received reforms are made.

Not to say that everything's great in europe's current state of affair but be careful not to be too influenced by political propaganda. Remember that the political direction of the union is set by the council which comprises the various head of states of the union. It's not like the parliament is this rogue extranational body that unilaterally dictates its will to the members of the EU.

"xenophobic"? Is that really the word you're going to use here? Bit ridiculous.

Is it not accurate? Portraying the democratically elected EU as 'undemocratic' because it is in contrast to a national government suggest to me that the source of the misrepresentation is due to them not being English (in this case).

That, and a very long track record of such sentiments being aired by those who are more transparently xenophobic. I don't see how it is ridiculous.

Unfortunately what you're hearing appears to be in your head. I didn't say that, nor do I think it is true. Please discuss in good faith.

That's not what the parent post says; reread it.

The facts of the given case notwithstanding, a lot of what happens on the EU level is quite undemocratic, IMHO. The reason being, that most of the power in EU institutions still lies with the Commission, not with Parliament. Commissioners are appointed by the national Governments, and not elected, and so twice-removed from all democratic processes.