> also know that they have no way to control or influence it
So they know what it is but nothing about how it works, should've specified I was talking about knowing how it works in my comments above
What's missing from your collection of quotes is that at the end of the day it all comes down to a public vote, whether in the EU parliament, national parliaments, referenda etc
The "secret lawmaking" still needs to be voted on in parliament, the Eurogroup is still made up of national ministers which answer to their parliaments
If people were the slightest interested that would change how those actors behave, as it is almost nothing MEPs do matters because their re-election or lack thereof will depend almost exclusively on national politics
> MEPs aren't allowed to change law or even start the process of changing the law
They are allowed to (and do) amend legislative proposals in almost all cases and can block a draft from becoming law in pretty much everything except foreign policy
What you're referring to is the lack of formal legislative initiative which does mean they can't amend an existing law on their own.
However amending laws requires anyway passing a new law which in turns requires the Council to be in favour as well. And if there's enough support that a majority of parliament and a QMV in the council wants something the commission will in practice make a proposal
But you know what else the parliament could do if they wanted? They could refuse to vote on anything or approve any budget unless the commission makes a proposal they want. The reason they can't do that politically however is that people don't know about how this stuff works and don't care about it. So if MEPs wanted to do that they'd end up being criticized by national leaders that people actually listen to and they'll bend or lose the nomination for the next elections or the election itself
The "secret lawmaking" still needs to be voted on in parliament
Because it's not actually a Parliament, its members pretty much always supports the Commission in whatever it wants to do except for the protest parties like UKIP, Le Pen's party etc. Nobody with any political ambition or interest goes to the EP because they can't do anything there, so it's full of seat warmers whose primary interest is collecting a salary.
Here's another Juncker quote for you, to demonstrate the problem:
Jean-Claude Juncker: ‘The Parliament is ridiculous’ After only about 30 MEPs show up for debate, Commission president says body ‘not serious.’
Can you imagine the British Prime Minister talking about the British Parliament in that way? Of course not, it's unthinkable. But Juncker is right. The EP is not even a Parliament because a Parliament is by definition the arm of government that creates law. The EP can't do that, therefore it isn't a Parliament, which leads to the question of what it really is. Unfortunately like in a single party state, the terminology of democracy is used but with procedural changes that render it an undemocratic system, thus we don't have a good word for this type of fake pseudo-Parliament.
You propose that the European "Parliament" could, in extremis, attempt to simply shut down the EU completely if the Commission didn't do as it was told. This is a theoretical possibility only, sort of like organizing a second party in a one party state. You could try, and anti-EU parties send people to the Parliament who think that institution shouldn't even exist at all, partly to try that (see UKIP). But the sort of people who want to spend years rotting uselessly in a powerless pseudo-Parliament are of course the sort of yes-men who went there specifically because they are EU mega fans. The sort of people who aren't obviously focus on national politics because that's where they think, correctly, power should actually reside.
A good example of the problems that typify the EP is that the EU likes prosecuting "crimes" like using funding you get via being elected to the EP to engage in anti-EU politics. One might think that people who work for a Parliament would be expected to engage in politics, but the EU considers campaigning against the EU to be a "conflict of interest" and national politics not European politics. Because the only possible positions you can have as a EU level party are pro/anti the EU as a whole due to that lack of power, classifying the anti position as "national politics" and thus a "conflict of interest" effectively encodes in EU procedure that the only allowable position in the Parliament is blindly applauding whatever is put in front of them. Do the opposite and you can be tried for fraud.
So they know what it is but nothing about how it works, should've specified I was talking about knowing how it works in my comments above
What's missing from your collection of quotes is that at the end of the day it all comes down to a public vote, whether in the EU parliament, national parliaments, referenda etc
The "secret lawmaking" still needs to be voted on in parliament, the Eurogroup is still made up of national ministers which answer to their parliaments
If people were the slightest interested that would change how those actors behave, as it is almost nothing MEPs do matters because their re-election or lack thereof will depend almost exclusively on national politics
> MEPs aren't allowed to change law or even start the process of changing the law
They are allowed to (and do) amend legislative proposals in almost all cases and can block a draft from becoming law in pretty much everything except foreign policy
What you're referring to is the lack of formal legislative initiative which does mean they can't amend an existing law on their own.
However amending laws requires anyway passing a new law which in turns requires the Council to be in favour as well. And if there's enough support that a majority of parliament and a QMV in the council wants something the commission will in practice make a proposal
But you know what else the parliament could do if they wanted? They could refuse to vote on anything or approve any budget unless the commission makes a proposal they want. The reason they can't do that politically however is that people don't know about how this stuff works and don't care about it. So if MEPs wanted to do that they'd end up being criticized by national leaders that people actually listen to and they'll bend or lose the nomination for the next elections or the election itself