Historically people either don't vote or vote blindly for a national party that is part of some block in the EU parliament without any regard for the issues. Turn out rates are usually low in any case. So as a consequence, most of the EU parliament is made up of second rate politicians who spend most of their career not interacting with or being scrutinized by voters, press, media, etc. The EU parliament is not where most countries send their best politicians currently (to put it mildly).
Last time the populists barely managed to scrape together enough votes to even form a block (there are some esoteric rules for this). For the past few decades, the christian democrat block and socialist block have dominated decision making. Those two are of course dominated by the leading parties in France and Germany, supported by their smaller sisters in other EU countries. However, both SPD and CDU/CSU in Germany are a lot smaller in the last few years an barely managed a majority nationally. In France, the socialists were completely wiped out and the current president bootstrapped a new party. Across Europe, the parties that make up these two blocks have been in decline.
So, this time, things may end up a bit more chaotic. While I don't necessarily see the rise of populism as progress, I do think shaking up the powers that be a bit may end up being a good thing in the EU.
The key lies in actually campaigning on issues and putting the pressure a bit on EU parliament members that are likely to lose their seat. As far as I understand there are a lot of currently very comfy christian democrats and socialists that are possibly not going to keep their seats due to their national parties doing less well across Europe lately. As soon as they are forced to debate and campaign on these issues, they'll be a lot less likely to commit to voting for something that is fundamentally a hard sell.
So, just start calling out EU parliament members on their voting past and put them on the spot to defend their points of view. Name names. Get them nervous. Remove their ability to hide behind the blocks + national parties they represent and whose party line they blindly toe. Make them work for a living.
The problem is, as important as issues like this are, whichever party you vote for you are likely to disagree with 20+% of their platform, so its just a game of 'best fit'. Minority interests like this lose out in that process because many more people are happy for it to be part of their own personal '20% I disagree with' (or more likely '50% I don't understand') than other big picture issues.
What's worse, theres no guarantee that theres sufficient overlap in everyone's 'parts of the platform I agree with' that ANY of their policies actually have the support of even 50% of the party's own voters. (This is the public choice theory of politics).
Party list systems then make this a bit worse because they make it easier for parties to discourage independent voices since few politicians will have sufficient personal following to be able to buck the machine over the long term.
The only realistic way in my view to get things like this changed is to buy into the system therefore - engage in lobbying of the existing parties, and have sufficient people join those parties, become involved in the party policy development mechanisms and stand for office for those parties to change them from within.
I think that's sadly something that activists for digital rights (for want of a better term) have not fully bought in to, and its why we keep seeing this pattern play out as a 'best case'.
The problem with this is that it only applies to people in some EU countries. The rest of us have to just hope that Germans see the light, because we're completely irrelevant to any German politician.
And in other news, the EU wants to do away with unanimous voting on tax issues.
Last time the populists barely managed to scrape together enough votes to even form a block (there are some esoteric rules for this). For the past few decades, the christian democrat block and socialist block have dominated decision making. Those two are of course dominated by the leading parties in France and Germany, supported by their smaller sisters in other EU countries. However, both SPD and CDU/CSU in Germany are a lot smaller in the last few years an barely managed a majority nationally. In France, the socialists were completely wiped out and the current president bootstrapped a new party. Across Europe, the parties that make up these two blocks have been in decline.
So, this time, things may end up a bit more chaotic. While I don't necessarily see the rise of populism as progress, I do think shaking up the powers that be a bit may end up being a good thing in the EU.
The key lies in actually campaigning on issues and putting the pressure a bit on EU parliament members that are likely to lose their seat. As far as I understand there are a lot of currently very comfy christian democrats and socialists that are possibly not going to keep their seats due to their national parties doing less well across Europe lately. As soon as they are forced to debate and campaign on these issues, they'll be a lot less likely to commit to voting for something that is fundamentally a hard sell.
So, just start calling out EU parliament members on their voting past and put them on the spot to defend their points of view. Name names. Get them nervous. Remove their ability to hide behind the blocks + national parties they represent and whose party line they blindly toe. Make them work for a living.