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It is a very complex system, and I say that as a US person who is used to a very complex system. In fact, I'm not really aware of any democratic nation with any

It is a very complex system, and I say that as a US person who is used to a very complex system. In fact, I'm not really aware of any democratic nation with anything quite as byzantine. The EU Commission President is nominated by the EU Council, which is itself comprised of the heads-of-state of the member states. The President is then confirmed by the EU Parliament, which is directly elected by voters. So far this seems straightforward. However: the remaining Commission members are selected by the Council of the European Union (CotEU), which is apparently not the same thing as the EU Council! Except that the Commission President also gets a vote in their selection. I tried to understand how the CotEU members are accountable to the voting public, but frankly the Wikipedia article is too hard to understand. The elected Parliament does not appear to get a say in this part of the selection. Then the Commission President selects the policy direction and assigns policy areas to the Commission members. The articles I found hint at the idea of consensus voting, but don't state it very explicitly. In any case, the President seems to have overwhelming authority within the Commission, given their role in selecting the members and the policy initiatives. At the same time, 26 out of 27 Commission members are selected by the CotEU and presumably the President depends on their good graces. I assume this makes more sense to EU citizens, who must learn about it in school. In total, power seems to be distributed in confusing ways across seven different governmental bodies, of which only one is directly elected? It's an interesting system, but maybe not the one I would choose given the current outcome.

hef19898 3y ago
Both, the European parliament and the European Council are voted for, the first directly by EU citizens, the latter by citizens of the individual EU countries everytime a new national election, and subsequent goverment formation, happens.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  And what about the Council of the EU?
  - malermeister 3y ago
    The Council of the EU is a meeting of ministers of various national governments, all of them elected by their respective electorate.
    - matthewdgreen 3y ago
      So the organization that selects the majority of the Commission Members (26 out of 27) is also the one that is the most distantly tied to the voting public. None of the CotEU are directly elected. The council also appears to have a complex rotating Presidency and multiple "configurations" in which different ministers hold varying amounts of power -- all of which adds abstraction and makes it more difficult to hold members accountable at the level of the voting public. If I were being cynical, I would assume that this was a deliberate attempt to insulate the EU executive selection process from any sort of direct electoral accountability. But maybe that's good? I don't know.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        All the commission members are elected in the respective member states elections... Ehy isn't that democratic? Rotating presendency, nice thing for an organisation made up of 26 member nations. And all those ministers are nominated following democratic elections in each member state. And as such, they are very much accountable to their electorate every 4-5 years. >> I don't know. I can confirm, you don't.
        matthewdgreen 3y ago
        > I can confirm, you don't. I'm sorry if I insulted or embarrassed you. That wasn't my intent. My view is that the design of governing bodies is another area of engineering, and you can learn a lot about design goals by looking at the resulting systems. But I realize this can also become very personal.
        hef19898 3y ago
AlbertCory 3y ago
35+ years ago, the ancestors of these people tried to force OSI on the world. The Feds in the US even "mandated" it with GOSIP. While there were giant Interop conferences in the 80's and early 90's for TCP, where every vendor had to demonstrate they could interoperate with everyone else, OSI never managed anything remotely close, because it was too complicated. Like the EC's structure. Instead, the tech community just proceeded with TCP and the Internet suite of protocols. Even when forced to buy "OSI-compliant" equipment, they actually ran TCP on their networks. Eventually OSI just died. Some vestiges survived, like LDAP and the notion of the "seven-layer model" (mainly 1-4). It's deeply, deeply ironic that, now that the Internet is global, the Eurocrats are back trying to take it over.

hef19898 3y ago

Both, the European parliament and the European Council are voted for, the first directly by EU citizens, the latter by citizens of the individual EU countries everytime a new national election, and subsequent goverment formation, happens.

matthewdgreen 3y ago
And what about the Council of the EU?
- malermeister 3y ago
  The Council of the EU is a meeting of ministers of various national governments, all of them elected by their respective electorate.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    So the organization that selects the majority of the Commission Members (26 out of 27) is also the one that is the most distantly tied to the voting public. None of the CotEU are directly elected. The council also appears to have a complex rotating Presidency and multiple "configurations" in which different ministers hold varying amounts of power -- all of which adds abstraction and makes it more difficult to hold members accountable at the level of the voting public. If I were being cynical, I would assume that this was a deliberate attempt to insulate the EU executive selection process from any sort of direct electoral accountability. But maybe that's good? I don't know.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      All the commission members are elected in the respective member states elections... Ehy isn't that democratic? Rotating presendency, nice thing for an organisation made up of 26 member nations. And all those ministers are nominated following democratic elections in each member state. And as such, they are very much accountable to their electorate every 4-5 years. >> I don't know. I can confirm, you don't.
      - matthewdgreen 3y ago
        > I can confirm, you don't. I'm sorry if I insulted or embarrassed you. That wasn't my intent. My view is that the design of governing bodies is another area of engineering, and you can learn a lot about design goals by looking at the resulting systems. But I realize this can also become very personal.
        hef19898 3y ago

AlbertCory 3y ago

35+ years ago, the ancestors of these people tried to force OSI on the world. The Feds in the US even "mandated" it with GOSIP. While there were giant Interop conferences in the 80's and early 90's for TCP, where every vendor had to demonstrate they could interoperate with everyone else, OSI never managed anything remotely close, because it was too complicated. Like the EC's structure. Instead, the tech community just proceeded with TCP and the Internet suite of protocols. Even when forced to buy "OSI-compliant" equipment, they actually ran TCP on their networks. Eventually OSI just died. Some vestiges survived, like LDAP and the notion of the "seven-layer model" (mainly 1-4). It's deeply, deeply ironic that, now that the Internet is global, the Eurocrats are back trying to take it over.