Speaking on The Pat Kenny Show, Lagarde underscored Europe’s dependence on foreign digital payment infrastructure. “Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Alipay are all controlled by American or Chinese companies,” she noted, arguing, “We should make sure there is a European offer.”
The EU is a bureaucratic organization with some purely symbolic democratic rituals. Governments (not citizens) of member countries really affecting it are supposed to be democratic, but at this point they are just OK, mostly. Nothing good to compare with.
Anyway - all these names are as meaningless as flags. Every decision made defines a system. You might call something a social democracy, but through 1, 2, 3 decisions overnight it’s suddenly something different, if there was a critical point.