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Looking up newer information on this, it seems it hasn't actually been adopted yet. Apparently, it is being stalled by the transport ministers of Germany and a few other countries.
The person I was replying to was claiming these sorts of regulations are imposed unilaterally by unelected Eurocrats. This is clearly not true given that EU legislation requires approval by a qualified majority of the European Council, consisting of ministers from the member states. As demonstrated in this case, they can in fact block legislation from being passed.
@theory
Ministers are unelected bureaucrats, though.
Does that include the prime minister? Really then, who isn't an unelected bureaucrat?
To me at least, "bureaucrats" are usually non-political career civil servants, people who you rarely hear about in the news except in extraordinary situations, e.g. Fauci. Ministers are politicians, appointed directly by the parliament. They feature in the news regularly, their names are well known, and they get voted out regularly, albeit by the parliament and not by some kind of recall referendum.
That one depends on the country.
This is also not true depending on the country.
And appointments are not elections.
The thing is European democracies have a pretty diverse range of democratic control and procedures to form governments, so where say an Italian government might be mostly made of career politicians and MPs, a French one could be made almost entirely of party men and administrators who do not hold elected office.
I understand the point you're trying to make is that of the classical opposition between the civil service and elected politicians which is so prominently displayed in Yes, Minister. But I question the relevance of it these days and specifically in the context of an organ so removed from democratic checks.
Some of the people who sit on this Council could not be removed by any vote, and formally none of them sit on it by election. Calling it any sort of democratic body seems silly to me.
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Someone else here mentioned one or two roundup threads ago that Germany has been pushing back on the plan because they were all for the ICE ban before Russia invaded Ukraine and cheap Russian gas was now no longer on the table.
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