> "sends its representative to the commission" That's where you've misunderstood. The commissioners are not the representatives of those that nominate them. Th

> "sends its representative to the commission" That's where you've misunderstood. The commissioners are not the representatives of those that nominate them. They are expressly forbidden from taking instructions from their national government. Don't believe me? Watch this, it's from the European Commission's YouTube channel... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWpgO1EPO_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWpgO1EPO_Y As for the wider point about the EU being democratic, perhaps you should take some time to listen to someone who has been directly involved with the EU. Here's an excerpt from a talk involving Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky... https://youtu.be/2WG-uEND74E?t=1h16m37s https://youtu.be/2WG-uEND74E?t=1h16m37s "Q: Hello. My question is for Mr. Chomsky. In the past you’ve been very critical of the way in which the West has engaged in political and economic imperialism around the world behind closed doors, kind of smoke and mirrors. How do you believe that transparency and democratizing the Eurozone— NOAM CHOMSKY: And democratizing the Eurozone. Q: How it will kind of affect or possibly deter this behavior? NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, actually one of the things that Yanis discusses in his book is that the Eurozone—in the Eurozone, democracy has declined arguably even faster than it has in the United States. During this past generation of neoliberal policies there has been a global assault on democracy, that’s kind of inherent in the principles. And in the Eurozone it’s reached a remarkable level. I mean, even the Wall Street Journal, hardly a critical rag, pointed out that no matter who gets elected in a European country, whether it’s communist, fascist, anybody else, the policies remain the same. And the reason is they’re all set in Brussels, by the bureaucracy, and the citizens of the national states have no role in this, and when they try to have a role, as in the Greek referendum, they get smashed down. That’s a rare step. Mostly they are sitting by passively as victims of policies over which they have nothing to say, and what Yanis said about the Eurogroup is quite striking. This is a completely unelected work group. Not in any remote way related to citizens’ decisions, but it’s basically making the decisions, the choices and decisions. That’s even beyond what happens here. Here it’s bad enough, but that’s more extreme. YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Let me add to this just to clarify something. Actually I will go further than Noam about Europe. The European Union doesn’t suffer or the Eurogroup from a democratic deficit. It’s like saying that we are on the moon and there is an oxygen deficit. There is no oxygen deficit on the moon. There is no oxygen, full stop. And this is official in Europe. At my first Eurogroup, as the rookie around, I was given the floor to set out our policies and to introduce myself, which is nice, and I gave the most moderate speech that I thought it was humanly possible to make. I said, “I know that you are annoyed I’m here. Your favorite guy didn’t get elected, I got elected, I’m here, but I’m here in order to work with you, to find common ground, there is a failed program that you want to keep insisting on implementing in Greece, we have our mandate, let’s sit down and find common ground.” I thought that was a pretty moderate thing to say. They didn’t. And then after me, after I had expounded the principle of continuity and the principle of democracy, and the idea of having some compromise between the two, Doctor Wolfgang Schäuble puts his name tag forward and demands the floor and he comes up with a magnificent statement, verbatim I’m going to give you what he said, “Elections cannot be allowed to change the economic policies of any country.” At which point I intervened and said, “this is the greatest gift to the Communist Party of China, because they believe that too.”'