It’s more than a bit ironic that both the USA and the European Union justify their wars on Russia and Iran as defenses of “democracy” when both organizations are observably anti-democratic in nature. All of their institutions are quite literally designed to prevent the will of the people from being enacted.
If anybody cares, what actually happened is that an extension of the European Union’s mass surveillance regulation known as Chat Control 1.0 failed to make it out of the European Parliament twice in March. Unable to summon a clear parliamentary majority, advocates (mostly in the centre-Right European People’s Party (EPP)) turned to the European Council, which adopted the failed Chat Control 1.0 renewal on July 2nd. The Council’s position hardens automatically into law unless the European Parliament can summon an absolute majority to stop it. To forestall any such majority from forming, the EPP on Tuesday moved with member state backing for urgent procedure, angling to force their scheme through in the last days before the summer holiday, after many MEPs had already left. The parliament narrowly approved the urgent procedure, and in consequence there were not enough votes to stop Chat Control 1.0 when it came for a vote today. Hours ago, a majority of 314 MEPs voted to stop Chat Control against the wishes of the Council, while a minority of 276 voted to let it happen. Because 314 is less than the absolute majority of 361, Chat Control 1.0 passed even though most MEPs present didn’t want it to.
It was a sleazy vote, not least because it’s far from clear this procedural manoeuvre was even appropriate in this case. Also, electronic surveillance is bad, but if we are honest with ourselves this battle was already lost.
Neither the EU Council nor the US Supreme Court are elected to their positions, so neither the EU nor the US government can even be considered representative democracies, much less genuine ones.