That's how it works in theory, according to the treaties. In reality the head of the Commission has a lot of power over who the commissioners are and have deve

That's how it works in theory, according to the treaties. In reality the head of the Commission has a lot of power over who the commissioners are and have developed a habit of placing many criteria upon national governments in whom they may appoint. The most obvious example of this is the way Jean-Claude Juncker illegally and secretly rejected candidates many times, against the treaties. This only became public because he bragged about it when telling countries that they would not be allowed to nominate conservative Euroskeptics to Commission jobs. He said: “Nobody knows this, but last time I rejected the candidacies of six of the Commissioners presented to me by national governments”. Note: this is totally illegal by treaty. As normal, nobody cares. The EU violates its own treaties regularly, this is just one more way. This system has now become institutionalized. For example vDL has required that half the commissioners be women and have rejected individual countries proposals, in order to get that. There have been quotas for women in the past too, just less than 50%. In theory this is not possible, in practice it is. As for the European Parliament, it's useless. It doesn't make laws, so elections to it devolve into pantomimes with candidates all explaining that their policy is either to strongly agree with whatever the Commission wants to do, or to just oppose everything. The level of democratic respect it garners was indicated by how it was totally bypassed last time - in theory, the head of the Commission is voted on by the EU Parliament. So what happens: they were given only one candidate on the list to vote for, vDL. A puppet pseudo-Parliament in which parties cannot have any policies, is not a real check on anything. It is a form of makeup covering the uglyness within, nothing more.