Europe's Hardest Test
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- Опубликовано: 30 июн 2021
- What:
A video about how to become an EU official and how it may feed into the conception of Europe as a technocracy. Although technocracies are often related to meritocracy, which is treated as a universal good, the EU's selection process can cause some problems in regards to national representation, ease of getting recruits, and feeding into the 'eurobubble.'
Why:
We thought it was important to describe a bit more of how someone can get into the EU, what this process means, and why some people are quick to talk about 'unelected bureaucrats.'
How:
We took a bunch of primary and secondary sources on the EPSO EU selection process and also more opinionated articles on what the potential ramifications could be.
Sources:
The sources for the video can be found here:
www.romuluseurope.eu
About us:
We are a team of Europeans trying to create European media.
Feedback is extremely useful, and it's incredibly important to understand that we are by no means the arbiters of truth: we can be wrong, and we will be wrong.
Also, there is a large difference between fake narratives and fake facts. Although we will try to stay as close to the truth in presenting objective facts (i.e there are 27 EU commissioners not 10), it is much more difficult to stay close to the truth when it comes to important narratives.
What the team decides is 'news' can shift the attention to a certain set of facts that may be true but may not be as important for other people, and this is where bias can easily come to fruition.
We ask the viewers to be aware of our bias and realize that, just like them, we are an imperfect team pushed by our own moral convictions and beliefs.
I can't say I fully agree on all points, I think the comission just like all other EU institutions should be representative of all members states and include people from all states and views to create a true All-European Government but I can't bring myself to see technocratic tendecies in the EU as something to be combated as opposed to just reformed, a functioning technocracy can make informed decisions and long term planning in ways that politicians who may only look to the next election cannot; of course this doesn't mean that democracy is unnecessary or bad (it is vital to ensure long term stability and representation of the people) but we shouldn't rule out making the EU a mixture of both, though this is just my opinion and I am willing to change it accordingly to evidence that disproves it.
Either way, thanks a lot for making this channel, I really enjoy European/EU-centered channels that treat the issue with nuance (instead of just devolving into eurosceptics rants like some tend to do, but I digress) and I'll keep around, here's hoping for the Romulus team to go far, based on what I've seen so far you deserve it.
Hey, really appreciate the message. I'll speak on behalf of the team when I say that we pretty much agree with what you think (good to be honest about our biases). The last thing we would want to do is dogmatically critique a process that secures incredibly competent and hard working people who will dedicate their lives to civil service. We do think there's a pretty interesting conversation that can be had about guiding rates (minimum national representation) for commission staff, but we're not sure what the ideal weighing of nationalities should be. Here's an interesting report you may like: eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1535555848758&uri=CELEX%3A52018DC0377R%2801%29
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but the comission is representative of all memberstates. the comissionaires are not the same, they change from work force to workforce depending in their area of experties. each goverment submits aplications for comissionaire positions in a new workforce the comission is creating, then the comission ranks the aplications and sends its opinion to each government, then the government choose the aplicant and send him or her to Brussels where thei will be part of the workforce to evaluate and project law projects and ideas that would solve the issue at stage
Where in the video is the technocracy presented as something to be combated?
Wow thanks to this video, many things about the EU finally makes sense.
Hey man, glad you liked it. There will be more stuff to come!
"The EU is a technocracy where decision makers are appointed on their expertise" the fact that VDL is EU commissioner refutes this claim.
Hahahaha
This sounds like USSR but with extra steps and more to the west
@@dsdf5857 Are people on the right alright? How tf are they even remotely similar
@@grotesque2786 It was a joke, chill out man but if you want some explanation I will give you: in USSR and it's satellite states there was practice for jobs that what your parents worked you will work as well, so if your father was an politician it was certain you will become one. They though that this will give advantage for a child to advance faster in a filed that their parents worked than those who didn't, and technically they weren't far from the truth (of course there is much more to that for me to write in RUclips comment to explain a mere joke). So you can say a chilled who grow in politician's household became expert in yearly age and has more years to practice it's knowledge. That makes it more suited for the specific job than someone who didn't.
@@grotesque2786My country is in the Balkans. Under communism we were controlled by a small intellectual elite on the other side of the continent. They made economic decisions for us, imposed their values, etc.
Today we live under the umbrella of the EU. A small intellectual elite on the other side of the continent controls our monetary policy, energy policy, economic regulation, tries to impose its bullshit values on us etc.
It`s basically the old song with a new voice. The difference is that the USSR used force and corruption and the EU uses bribes called "euro funds" and soft power. We hate Brussels but we stay in the EU because of the money and because if it wasn`t the EU and Germany exploiting us it would be Turkey or Russia which at least for now sounds like a worse deal.
The moment the EU funds stop though we`ll probably be leaving along with 2/3 of the other member states like Poland, Hungary, etc. I`d give this union another 20-30 years until another great economic crisis happens and the countries that pay the money like France and Italy go bankrupt.
I'VE BEEN SAYING the EU is a technocracy for YEARS now...
Pointing people to this is video makes it so so so SO much easier to have a baseline and starting point for discourse
They'll probably retort: all modern bureaucracies are meritocracies
@@FOLIPE who decides the merits? A kingdom is a meritocracy at the same level that the EU is a technocracy, on what merits does these claims hold true to.
Are they experts on economy, I highly doubt it, the EU isn't exactly prosperous, and it does whatever it can to make useless regulations that harms more people than it helps.
I can't cross the border into Denmark and produce Snus, and sell it there, because it can only be sold in Sweden, due to stupid rules made by the EU, I could go anywhere outside the EU and make it, and sell it, it wouldn't be very profitable seeing as 90% of the Snus users live in Sweden.
THE EU IS SHIT. AND IT CONSISTS OF BUREAUCRATS. The less of those mfs on our planet the better. If I were allowed to nuke one place in the world it would be Brussels just so that I could get rid of the EU. Sweden's biggest mistake was joining the EU. The only nation that benefits from being in the EU is the Netherlands.
@@FOLIPE Nothing could be further from the truth.
A lot of modern bureaucracies are filled to the brim with nepotism.
And while in theory nepotism and meritocracy are not completely impossible to coexist, they are pretty much opposites.
It does not mean that meritocracy is non-existant, but we still have a long way to go.
What's wrong about technocracy?
In many ways it's better than democracy, if correctly realised.
Voters usualy have no idea what they are voting for, not just policies of candidates but what even is the role and duties
of position candidates are being elected for. Avarage voter has no idea how even the election system even works.
Current so called representative "democracies" are a popularity contest at best. They are plagued by nepotism and are mostly glorified oligarcharies.
People are more interested in ideologies than working solutions.
Both sides of political spectrum seem to care more about their views than scientific feedback on their policies.
Everyone cares for their 4 year government run, barly anyone cares about long time effect of their action. System of Nation wide instant gratifitication.
This is a breeding ground for populism. The best solutions democracies have to deal with totalitarist systems seem to be banning them and repressing their followers.
Something that in the end is against ideas of free-speach, of democracy itself.
If full technocracy is too much, at least consider voters need to pass a basic test of how voting system operates and on position in question before they can actually cast their vote.
This doesn't even have to be 1 time test.
You could aproche it as many times you want.
@@madtechnocrat9234 couple of things wrong with it, but as someone who's wanting and trying to get a neo-technocratic movement rolling in europe, I'm very much pro technocracy.
I think the old school technocratic movement isn't humanistic or environmentalist enough
Nice username
You should review the definition of bureaucracy:
noun: bureaucracy - a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.
Technocrats are bureaucrats/state officials with expert knowledge. You cannot have a technocracy without being a bureaucracy. Therefore, if you make the argument that the EU is a technocracy you must accept it is a bureaucracy. They are not different things.
To my suprise, today I've learned that an institution like the College of Europe exists.
This is clearly a problem since it has a very significant role as mentioned here. Also, I couldn't find any video explaining what exactly the college does, so I needed to go to Wikipedia and their own website.
So, if you are bored and in the search of a new topic to report on: The College of Europe seems to be an topic.
I wish my country was a technocracy instead of being run by the winners of a popularity contest between pillagers.
Don't be too eager to live in a technocracy. Just because the leaders are the best intellectuals, it doesn't mean they cannot be malevolent, corrupt or selfish. The simple problem with a pure technocracy is that you cannot easily remove or identify malevolent figures, which can still lead to the "tyranny of the few".
Ofc a pure democracy have just as large flaws, as a pure technocracy.
@@theabaddon7457 I agree, but I would say that simply statistically speaking on average living in a technocracy would be better than most other forms of governance. Of course corrupt technocracies can exist, but so can literally every other form of government.
@@alexxans1154 Advantages have disadvantages and disadvantages have advantages. Technocracy in theory indeed have the most competent leaders, however i would argue, that on the accountability & advocacy for the masses scale it is barely better, than a dictatorship if i want to exaggerate just a tiny bit.
The proof of my argument is the migration crisis. According to all long-term indicators migration is a blessing. It has some negative effects too, but in the long term, these effects are negligiable compared to the potential benefits.
However these negative effects are disproportionately felt by the ordinary people compared to the richer citizens. For example: an average technocratic leader will definitely live in richer neighbourhoods, which are not affordable for these migrant families, so they will only experience these problems as statistics & indicators.
Politics & leadership is always a controversial topic, because it not only involves cold & hard benefits, but also the sentiment of the people.
@@theabaddon7457 if we are speaking from a pure form of governance I'd say that you are right. And that's my point, that in a vacuum imo the best form of governance is a technocracy. But the best from a specific amount of samples is not the best possible. If I had to choose between lentil soup, pea soup or beans I would say that lentil soup is the best, this doesn't mean that I like it, or that I would choose it if there were other options available. The same applies here. I think we need to tweak the current system as to account for its shortcomings, but keep the basic structure as it is.
Maybe you can think about it like this:
There are 2 big “design constraints” for a government:
a) The government needs to act The interest of the people
b) The government needs to be *good* at acting. Ergo it needs to be effective.
A pure technocracy only optimized for b). It makes the government good at acting. But it doesn’t ensure that it’s actions will be good.
amazing channel my dude :) keep up the great work!
This technocracy means that the aloofness of the EU is even more heightened
A technocracy is a bureaucracy that thinks it's smart.
Meanwhile democracy is a glorified popularity contest with nepotist and populist tendencies.
wow man your videos are great !
technocracy is just an euphemism
You are one of few channels i can watch at normal speed because you fill space with economical unbroken speech❤
There’s no real difference between a technocracy and a bureaucracy.
Bureaucracies need technical staff, technocracies are inherently (and firstly) political in nature.
The filter is another excuse to be selective (read classist and nepotent).
Technocracy is any system that governed by experts.
Bureaucracy is a system governed by non-elected officials.
There is no requirement for bureacrats to be experts, and there is no requirement for technocrats to be not elected.
Both of this can be obviously true at the same time, but claiming they are the same is a mistake.
And claiming that they cannot exist seperatly is a manipulation.
@@madtechnocrat9234 I'm aware of the definitions, thank you. What I'm saying is that there's no practical difference between the two.
Technocracies require a way to assess expertise, which naturally leads them to constrain the definition until officials are non-elected.
Bureaucracies need to filter the vast amounts of applicants that want a position of power, which leads to extensive testing. All bureaucrats are in some extent experts, at least in passing the filters required to get their job.
In both cases the end result is the same.
@@theondono
"naturally leads them to constrein the definition unitl officials are non-elected"
This is an oversimplification.
Voting system in which people get their votes weighed based on their education, experience or other qualifications releted to voting in question is technicly speaking a technocracy but definitly is not a bureaucracie.
Bureaucracy at least in my country, is filled quickly by nepotism trough politicians who do everything in their power to put their own people in them every election.
This is hardly an expertise based system.
@@madtechnocrat9234 If you have a weighted voting system, who decides the weights? Who decides which experience qualifies and and how much education counts?
You're changing the "metagame", but the end result keeps being the same. Academia is *full to the brim* with nepotism, you're just changing *who* gets to put it's friends in power.
comment for alghoritm!
I live your Vids. Could I ask though are you funded in anyway by the EU or any of its institutions? I mean I'll like your videos either way I'm just interested to know
Greetings from Mexico. Finnally a channel that talks about the politics and economics of the EU and not America.
good quality videos
I've just learned that KUL and UCL are two distinct institutions and not different names for the same university
Yep, both are louvain, just not the same louvain.
Funny story: At one point louvain was just the KUL, with both french and flemish students, but then the flemish side (generally the linguisticly repressed side) started protests and revolts, resulting in the french side moving to a new city, louvain-la-neuve.
As a result you have a dutch KUL and french UCL.
If you ever look into belgium this is extremely unsuprising. Considering we do that all the time.
As an American I can imagne... fanatize really what makes up thought in the Eurobubble and the ideal EU... but I don't know. So maybe a that's a video idea?
The less power the people have to change who runs things is a big invitation for anyone who wants power and control and without the ability to change those in power with a simple vote greed and corruption will take hold everybody even the smartest of us can be corrupt and greedy its the ability to vote them out of power that keeps people honest
Although I appreciate that the video tries to make a sober and objective view on the issue, it still doesn't show the full picture - the legislation proposed by the Commission goes into a directly elected European Parliament and the Council of the EU, representing national interests. To be fair, the Commission has a monopoly on proposing legislation, but in the Member States, it's also the government and its majority who usually stand behind a vast majority of legislation.
Additionally, it should be stressed that national governments, like the Commission, are also made up of unelected officials, and the only ones that have democratic legitimacy are the few ministers on the top. The Commissioners (EU ministers) are not selected in a typical democratic process, but have some legitimacy, as they are chosen by democratic national governments and approved by the Parliament, to which the Commission is accountable.
To sum up, the EU does not fully seem like a typical democratic state, but it is not a state. Therefore, applying "tests of democracy" has to be done with a pinch of salt.
p sounds are so hard to ignore every half second.
Nice
I guess Qing China was also a Technocracy
If mordecai from regular show was a professor.
EU is a technocracy but it also has some flaws
Isn't this essentially the problem in every (large) country? Hell, even in society at large bubbles like this are everywhere: in political leanings, social and economic demographies, regional bubbles, ...
Essentially the best way to combat this bubble forming is the have citizen panels/surveys about things were it matters (like certain policies/new laws). This way you can understand the viewpoint of society at large and the different groups within it. Now, this ofcourse would cause it to take more time and resources, which obviously will again be used to point at the 'large bureaucracy' of the EU/....
Honestly, I think the EU definitely doesn't do worse than most other large nations/entities.
That most employees come from Belgium and Luxembourg isn't really surprising, everyone else will have to move specifically just to do these jobs, these nationalities don't. Obviously having to move to another country/region to do your job might not be really interesting for a lot of people.
I don't think bureaucracy or technocracy are in themselves bad
People are able to trade freely within the bloc because the bureaucracy is cleared at the EU level sth people are finding out here I'm the UK
also bureaucracy is an safeguard of tradition and conventions
The problem with elitism isn't that uncommon in civil service around the world
Beauraucracy is the Corner stone of Democracy.
And who wrote the EPSO? Some bureaucrat. No matter how meritorious, no one has the qualifications to run the lives of a free people.
EU for peace
It remind me of the mandarin system in China before 1905 which was responsible for its backwardness.
The EU is a technocracy where decision makers are appointed on their expertise. Ehm, yeah idk in which EU you live but certainly not in mine :DD
For years I was an EPSO test administrator (not true at all about belgian bias)
In monarchy at least King would have the incentive to change some things and seek after efficiency, technocracy feels like it's reactive at first and then invent problems for itself. I think Europe should federalise but be more democratic and if that's not possible I would prefer monarchy over technocracy.
??? Efficient monarch ???
Like, uh... What monarch?
I am not saying you are wrong, I am just confused, because "monarch" sounds me like an UK or historical France, Russia, Poland kings - and those definitely weren't seeking to better their countries...
Its only sad that despite all kinds of government you may call it, from democracy is EU the furtest away, with EU parliament having practically no power at all.
EU parliament has actually got quite some power, the problem is that the EU isn't one nation, which limits what the parliament really can get in power. Also I'd say that the EU is actually trying so much to be democratic that it has become rather complex to many people not really informed, which causes the 'bureaucracy' criticism to really be used more.
Dzmocracy of course is good but a lot of theorists might refute kt being the perfect option. Although unellected gouvernements have MANY problems they still have advantages democracies dont offer. For example: they might be less inclined to suddenly switch policy, reverting any progress or time for thr last policy to come into effect, they´ll be far less driven by votes and as such work better long term and their staff is always educated at least and specialised in what they do, unlike democracies where politicians can become minister of climate without any knowledge of the topic.
Ilm not saying democracy is bad fyi, it also has a lot of positives, all I´m saying is that its not neccesirly perfect, nor possibly even the best.
Education makes no difference. Bureaucrats have their own interests. That's the problem with bureaucracies. Educated or not, they care about getting more funding.
That's exactly the problem with the EU and why the UK wanted to leave. It is not very democratic. Now it might be very effective and lead by smart people but not by people who come from poorer areas and it is unrepresentative of some areas and cultures.
Your other video about a pan European identity is erasing the individuals indentity with no self determination.
@ger du That is the cheesiest way you could’ve said that.
Exactly being able to vote in and out those in power keeps them honest and down to earth and curbs corruption to some degree at least
Isn't this similar to the UK? How much of the british administration do you think is representative for the poorer area's, probably few. And this isn't about MP's mind you, but the cabinets and the layers underneath. In truth most governments of large countries will have underrepresentation of poorer demographies in their administration, especially when talking about big countries/regions.
ger du good, now stretch that argument a little further.
No the UK left becouse of Xenofobia and a feeling of beeing better then anybody els . Thats it . Has nothing to do with the EU not beeing democratic and this vidos didnt even say anything about the EU not beeing deomcratic . You take something twist it around to magicly get a fake point on your sheet .
Z
Russian troll?
The EU is far, very far, from being a technocracy. A technocracy would actually need real expertise and direct elections per field. The EU has nothing of both. The politicians are in the field they find the most interesting and they have been before, but they do not have expertise in the field. And secondary, the biggest Problem of the EU after all:
No one elects anyone in the EU. You vote for a party of your country to represent yourself in the EU and they appoint their political member that has politically focused on that one specific topic. These people then have access to somewhat professionals in their field, who usually have failed in the practical world of their field.
If at best, which doesn't even really apply either, then the EU is just another pseudo-representative elected autocracy(, dreamers could say democracy instead).
Also, as someone else already claimed: Von der Leyen is the perfect example this whole technocracy claim is obsolete.
BUT, to not be a bummer: The EU might be the political system that is the closest to being a technocracy. If you would brush away the political layer.
Biggest giveaway is that a large swath of EU politicians have a masters in political science, not physics ;)
@@hoogyoutube Technocracy does not require to have master in physics. It requires to have expertise in a field you are working in. Preferably the best expertise from all available candidates. Your views are not realy important as long as you meet the requirements.
Obviously has flaws... but so do all political systems. And there are ways to go around that.
No the EU is a Bureaucracy through and through, those who vote don't even look at what they're voting on.
Anyone who thinks the EU is a fort of rationality, such as what a technocracy would be, due to it only consisting of experts, but the EU doesn't consist of experts, it consists of POLITICIANS. The group of people with the least amount of expertise in ANY AREA.