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Notes -
The war between the future Italian Government and the EU is beginning.
After a question by a student, the Commission President von Der Leyen, said that the EU will use "all their instruments, as happened against Hungary and Poland" against Italy in the case of "democratic backsliding".
As always, after this, accusation from every part came, with the Left defending it and the Right attacking it. Notice that von Der Leyen is part of the CDU(PPE), but their policies have always been center-left.
Apart from this phrase (von Der Leyen is not new at speaking too much with the wrong words at the wrong time), it will be noteworthy to see what will happen if Italy enter the bad boy group with Poland and Hungary, especially when also Sweden and Spain will probably see governments with the hard-right inside or at the helm.
The instrument of "follow liberal human rights or sanctions" can work against Warsaw and Budapest, but against all these countries?
What will happen will define how democracy will function in the EU, and if parties that are not part of the PPE-PSE-Liberal-Green megagroup will bow and assimilate to the center-right, or will follow the Orban line.
For now, it looks like the Italian Goverment will follow a moderate line, considering that economic recession is behind the corner and the debt is exploding again.
I keep noticing people using the word "democratic" in place of "socially left". E.g.: if a middle eastern country, after elections and with parliamentary majority, passes a law forcing women to wear hijabs or whatever, that is democratic. If Slovenia votes in 3 separate referendums that they don't want gay marriage, and it still legalized, that is undemocratic. Yet people use the opposite labels to describe such events.
Another examples is when the supreme court overturned Roe vs Wade. People were saying it was undemocratic even though all it did was return the power to regulate abortion from the unelected court to elected officials.
I don't like Roe and am glad it was overturned, but it seems legitimate to call its reversal undemocratic because overturning Roe was unpopular according to polls.
(It is also fine to call Roe itself undemocratic for the reason you give. This is no more contradictory, in theory, than when Congress wants to defer its authority to Executive Department bureaucrats.)
In my experience, undemocratic is only used for its literal meaning, but it's also only used to show negative valence and primarily used by the left, so undemocratic right wing moves get called "undemocratic" but undemocratic left wing moves don't get that descriptor applied.
This is a roundabout way of saying that the grandparent to this comment doesn't match my experience. The media would portray the Slovenian Court decision positively, but it wouldn't call the decision "democratic".
It would be cool if the Supreme Court had the ability to initiate national referendums on court cases or to convene citizens' assemblies via sortition.
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