It's just basic horse-trading. A somewhat extreme yet very basic example would "all of the law" (for some specific jurisdiction). Assuming this isn't North Korea, you will probably find an overwhelming majority considering the status quo to be better than completely lawless anarchy, even though every single individual can probably point at some individual law that they would rather abolish.
International trade agreements make good examples: People often decry their incredible size, with thousands of pages and topics ranging from the legal system to GMO to copyright to cheese. Yet the size is the natural result of requiring the package to contain every signing country's pet issues. If Canada is mildly opposed to adopting US standards for turn signal frequency, just add a provision defining minute details for maple syrup classification and they'll be happy again. And on to Japan... etc.
Another example from US law would be the "sequester" that put caps on both military as well as civilian spending. If you want something broader, it's how the budget process used to work, and to some extend still does. Yes, these examples from the US require only majorities (or 60-vote supermajorites in the Senate), not unanimity. But the mechanism is identical.
That mechanism is, by the way, why there have been calls to once again allow "pork", i. e. specific grants of money to projects in individual congressional districts. While those payments had an incredibly bad reputation as being wasteful and borderline corrupt, they allowed for "bundles" of legislation to be tailor-made to get exactly the quorum required. Money happens to be perfect in that context as it is in others: it's fungible, meaning you don't have to start researching each districts' current needs when you want to make an offer. It's divisible, allowing the sum to be just right to get the vote without "overpaying" as often happens if you only have the crude instrument of actual policy.
And there's one advantage of money that's unique to this use: Nobody actually cares that much about spending. While yes, overall spending levels are somewhat significant, giving some 12-term Republican from East Nowhere, MI a million $ for whatever idiotic pet project they care about carries far less of a risk of losing you support on the other side of the spectrum as implementing their favorite policy (slightly exaggerated: vegan-only school lunches; or required heterosexual target practice in preschool) would.
I understand it's all about horse-trading, it's the meaning of the word "everyone" in the claim "a net positive for everyone" that I question.
My understanding of European Union horse-trading is that it's all about "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". This might well be good for most if not all EU politicians and bureaucrats, it's patently not going to be a net positive for every single citizen.
Example: the travelling circus that is the EU Parliament moving back and forth between BRU and SXB.
"The campaign to end the European parliament's expensive monthly commute to Strasbourg received a boost yesterday when a European commissioner criticised it as a sign of "insanity". Margot Wallstrom, a commission vice-president, said: "Something that was once a very positive symbol of the European Union, reuniting France and Germany, has now become a negative symbol - of wasting money, bureaucracy and the insanity of the Brussels institutions."[0]
"though MEPs have voted to scrap a second parliament, the French government has the power to block any such move [..] It is perhaps the most outlandish of the European Union’s excesses; a £130 million travelling circus that once a month sees the European Parliament decamp from Belgium to France.
Over the course of the weekend, some 2,500 plastic trunks will be loaded on to five lorries and driven almost 300 miles from Brussels to Strasbourg.
On Monday, about 1,000 politicians, officials and translators will then make the same journey on two specially chartered trains hired at taxpayers’ expense."[1]
"Everyone" was meant as "every EU member state". Of course no policy will ever truly be net positive for 300M+ people. That's impossible, in that, for example, a magic spell instantly turning North Korea into a free, democratic, peaceful country renown for its humor and abundance of good spots for snorkeling would likely be negative for Kim Jong Un.
For the EU this discussion is basically identical with the tired flame war of "EU is undemocratic cleptocratic fascist/communist (please circle according to preference) monster bureaucracy deciding on banana and keeping brave people of Somecountry down" vs. "Nope, it isn't, and the banana example is no longer just wrong, but also outdated".
>> Of course no policy will ever truly be net positive for 300M+ people.
Never mind all of them, one could ask whether some "horse-traded" policies are even a net positive for a simple majority? I'm thinking of, for instance, the Common Agricultural Policy.
This certainly isn't just an EU issue, or even confined to politics, small groups often seem to wield a disproportionate amount of power.
International trade agreements make good examples: People often decry their incredible size, with thousands of pages and topics ranging from the legal system to GMO to copyright to cheese. Yet the size is the natural result of requiring the package to contain every signing country's pet issues. If Canada is mildly opposed to adopting US standards for turn signal frequency, just add a provision defining minute details for maple syrup classification and they'll be happy again. And on to Japan... etc.
Another example from US law would be the "sequester" that put caps on both military as well as civilian spending. If you want something broader, it's how the budget process used to work, and to some extend still does. Yes, these examples from the US require only majorities (or 60-vote supermajorites in the Senate), not unanimity. But the mechanism is identical.
That mechanism is, by the way, why there have been calls to once again allow "pork", i. e. specific grants of money to projects in individual congressional districts. While those payments had an incredibly bad reputation as being wasteful and borderline corrupt, they allowed for "bundles" of legislation to be tailor-made to get exactly the quorum required. Money happens to be perfect in that context as it is in others: it's fungible, meaning you don't have to start researching each districts' current needs when you want to make an offer. It's divisible, allowing the sum to be just right to get the vote without "overpaying" as often happens if you only have the crude instrument of actual policy.
And there's one advantage of money that's unique to this use: Nobody actually cares that much about spending. While yes, overall spending levels are somewhat significant, giving some 12-term Republican from East Nowhere, MI a million $ for whatever idiotic pet project they care about carries far less of a risk of losing you support on the other side of the spectrum as implementing their favorite policy (slightly exaggerated: vegan-only school lunches; or required heterosexual target practice in preschool) would.