I glanced at comments under a video about the brexit clusterfuck and that made me want to very shortly address one of the most frequent – and in my opinion most nonsensical – objections against EU, used by brexiteers and euroskeptics everywhere. The idea, that unelected bureaucrats in Brussels should not be able to “dictate” sovereign states what to do and not to do.

Firstly people do elect representatives into EU parliament, and it is only sad that many people do not know this and that these elections have generally low turnout.

But what about those other bodies, I hear them cry, those are not elected!

Well, neither are such bodies within the different states. People who voice this criticism fail to realize that in Europe we have usually representative democracy, so our elected representatives do not usually decide directly about anything. That is not their function. The elected representatives negotiate and decide the rules for decisions – like laws and regulations – and those decisions are always, always put into action by unelected bodies following some common rules. For example the minister of agriculture in CZ is not voted into office, they are selected by politicians after the election and confirmed by a president. And the bureaucrats working in the offices are not voted at all and most of them carry over from one administration over to the other. They are employees of the state(s) and blaming them for deciding things in accordance with the laws and regulations that were decided upon by the politicians people voted into office is, to put it mildly, idiotic.

By this logic people in some district in Wales could argue, loudly and obnoxiously, that those unelected bureaucrats in London should not be deciding about what they can and cannot do and how!

Unfortunately, there are actually people who use that sort of argument too…