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Aye, you're right in that democracy isn't just one singular concept, there are various forms.
But think on what the idea of democracy is supposed to represent. It's supposed to be rule by the people. If 48% of the people are having their authority to rule superceded by the 52% then how can you say it's rule by the people? It's rule only by the majority. Democracy only in colloquial common parlance.
The word democracy has been bastardised even since its very conception so it's difficult to define without arguments. The EU however have already defined their democracy at the highest state level on similar principles that anarchists do, of consensus. All countries are equal, all countries can say no. This will throw that away in favour of less democracy, less equality, less say in how the continent functions, in tyranny of the majority.
It will be the beginning of the end for the European project. And I'm not saying that lightly or as hyperbole.
Wouldn't a more elegant solution be more thought put into what kind of votes need a supermajority or some specific % over 50 to need a successful vote? Surely at some point, for it to be a democracy, you do need the majority rule to win the day, right++? I'd argue one or two nations vetoing a thing agreed upon by everyone else is more explicitly anti democratic than those nations needing to abide by a vote they handily lost.
I think the EU is at the limits of what a loose confederation can do, we've seen historically these arrangements just can't really function long term on a large scale. And the argument here is that for Europe to stay relevant in a world where the US and China, not to mention Russia, exists if not as outright adversaries then stiff competitors, there needs to be a better ability to coordinate this like military and money. Especially the latter, I'd argue... how many European start ups immediately abandon ship for the US as soon as they go public because there's a pile of investment money there rather than the fractured markets of Europe? That problem is never going away on its own, even with the US playing target practice with its feet (slight digression there, but I think it's one of the most obvious examples of why the EU needs reform towards stronger federal power).
At a certain point, if you want a large functioning democratic body with any power, you need to submit to the decisions of that power whether you agree with the decision or not. That's not just colloquial versus not, that's the very essence of democracy imo. If you can just opt out of decisions you don't like, that's not really democratic rule, that's just a forum for discussion.
++(Obviously, this implicitly needs rights and protections to prevent one group from outright repressing another, but still, a veto seems like a really, really inelegant solution to avoiding tyranny of the majority situations.)
You are making the mistake to believe the EU can only compete by becoming what it despises. This will have the opposite effect in reality, with the EU breaking apart.
shrug I don't see a path away from it; separate, the individual nations aren't big enough to be relevant. China isn't going to be supplanted for the manufacturing hub nor the US as the financial hub without more cohesion, and so Europe will continue to lose relevancy in terms of ability to influence world geopolitics.
We've seen time and time again promising European countries jump ship for the US when it's time to go public... the money is here in Europe but broken into fractured markets with just as fractured rules and regulations. Why would a company looking for investment bother when they can just go to the US and get one big pile of it?
This isn't even addressing even more practical problems like military.
Confederacies just don't last very long historically. They either break or become more centralised eventually.
[citation needed]
(And they often break apart after briefly becoming more centralized, in an misguided attempt to force unity where there isn't any anylonger)
you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means