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> What makes this so painful for me is that person responsible, the comission president von der Leyen, was not actually elected by the people. Forgive me for p

> What makes this so painful for me is that person responsible, the comission president von der Leyen, was not actually elected by the people. Forgive me for picking on this, but I see it regularly come up whenever the deficit of democracy in the EU is discussed and I completely disagree with that assessment. The President of the US is not elected by "the people". The PMs of most countries are invited to form a government by the head of state, not directly by the people. This is a common feature in many democracies, executive roles are not directly elected and are instead picked based on support by parliamentary majorities. The President of the European Commission is elected by the Parliament, which is itself elected directly by the people of the EU. I see absolutely no problem there. There are other things which deserve more attention, like the disproportionate amount of power the Council has vis a vis the Commission and the Parliament.

turbinerneiter 6y ago
Thanks for being the 1000 person to explain this to me. They promised before the election that the candidate of the strongest party would get the job. The whole plan was to strengthen the parliament, and the whole promise was broken after the election, _because_ the council wanted to make sure the parliament and commission are kept weak. Whenever I have this discussion people for some reasons assume I don't know even the most basic mechanics of the system I critize. And the same people always conveniently forget what we were promised during the election campaign. All parties agreed to make the candidate of the strongest party after the election the commission president. They all promised that. Von der Leyen is the council and national governments taking a dump on the parliament. And it didn stop there! During the backroom deals that lead to this, the parliament negotiated that they will only play along if they finally get more power. Fast forward a couple of months and they got stiffed and insulted again. The brexit deal i.e. was an affront to parliament, because they didn't even get to vote it on it. The vaccine deals were kept secret from them. And on and on and on. The only directly elected body in the EU is constantly being disrespected. You act like these are separate problems, but the fact that we got von der Leyen, who didn't even run in the election, IS THE SAME thing as the problem of Power of council vs. Commission vs. Parliament. The later caused the former. (Sorry for the tone, I got angry, but not at you. Please read it in mickey mouse voice to take the edge off.)
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  I think your perspective is fair. Personally, I think that the Commission should be directly elected by the Parliament from it's members, which would make it much more similar to the national governments. I'm not sure the Council (i.e. the member states) would agree to that though. At least since Lisbon, the EP has some (not enough) power over Commissioners.
  - turbinerneiter 6y ago
    I agree. This would also mean there have to be coalition negotiations. It would drastically increase the public debate across Europe and give people more stake in what is going on.

turbinerneiter 6y ago

Thanks for being the 1000 person to explain this to me. They promised before the election that the candidate of the strongest party would get the job. The whole plan was to strengthen the parliament, and the whole promise was broken after the election, _because_ the council wanted to make sure the parliament and commission are kept weak. Whenever I have this discussion people for some reasons assume I don't know even the most basic mechanics of the system I critize. And the same people always conveniently forget what we were promised during the election campaign. All parties agreed to make the candidate of the strongest party after the election the commission president. They all promised that. Von der Leyen is the council and national governments taking a dump on the parliament. And it didn stop there! During the backroom deals that lead to this, the parliament negotiated that they will only play along if they finally get more power. Fast forward a couple of months and they got stiffed and insulted again. The brexit deal i.e. was an affront to parliament, because they didn't even get to vote it on it. The vaccine deals were kept secret from them. And on and on and on. The only directly elected body in the EU is constantly being disrespected. You act like these are separate problems, but the fact that we got von der Leyen, who didn't even run in the election, IS THE SAME thing as the problem of Power of council vs. Commission vs. Parliament. The later caused the former. (Sorry for the tone, I got angry, but not at you. Please read it in mickey mouse voice to take the edge off.)

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
I think your perspective is fair. Personally, I think that the Commission should be directly elected by the Parliament from it's members, which would make it much more similar to the national governments. I'm not sure the Council (i.e. the member states) would agree to that though. At least since Lisbon, the EP has some (not enough) power over Commissioners.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  I agree. This would also mean there have to be coalition negotiations. It would drastically increase the public debate across Europe and give people more stake in what is going on.