> In reality, the number of levels of indirection between you or me as ordinary people who vote in elections and Ursula von der Leyen as the most powerful perso

> In reality, the number of levels of indirection between you or me as ordinary people who vote in elections and Ursula von der Leyen as the most powerful person in the EU government removes any meaningful requirement for her to either achieve a popular mandate before taking office or accept any meaningful personal accountability for her performance while in office. In my country (France) there is exactly one level of indirection between me and Ursula von der Leyen: the President (currently Emmanuel Macron). Of course my voice is only one among 60 million French citizens, and 450 million EU citizens. And yet since I personally voted for Macron and IIRC Macron is the one who proposed Ursula von der Leyen, the line is pretty straight... In the UK there would be two levels: you elect your MPs, that then chose the Prime Minister, that then chose the European Commission President and Commissioners. But I understand what you say. I had heard about Ursula von der Leyen as Germany defense minister before she became President of the European Commission (but that's only because I pay some attention to European defense affairs), yet when I cast my vote for Macron, I wasn't quite expecting to be voting for her. I would prefer for the head of the European Commission to be elected by European MPs, but that would give too much power to the EU, a big no no for many EU members (including UK, at least while it was part of the EU). Notice the irony in that it's usually the political parties that criticize the EU the most for being undemocratic, that are the ones that oppose it becoming more democratic the most. It's disingenuous, yet logical, because a more democratic EU would have more power, so if you are anti-EU you don't want that. As things stand the European Commission is only doing what the European Council is asking them to do. Which is somewhat ok (as in democratic), but lend itself more to shenanigans between states. If the European Commission was instead bound to the European Parliament, it would care less of the member states, and more of European citizens... > And more generally, European Commissioner is infamous for being a role you give a national politician who is still in favour with the leadership but perhaps has lost popular support. Just look at the past roles of the people who get nominated to these positions by their respective governments. There's an incredible number of ex-representatives, and often not ex- by choice but because the electorate chose not to re-elect them. In France it's usually perceived as a promotion. Our previous representative (Pierre Moscovici) was rather popular, and the current one (Thierry Breton) isn't even a politician: he was the CEO of Atos (a competitor of IBM I would say). Although he was minister once, from 2005 until 2007, so he is not a complete newbie in politics. Isn't it somewhat ironic that left-leaning France is sending a successful CEO to the European Commission, while UK is (was) recycling failing politicians?