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Comment by rhblake | Hacker News Reader

It should be noted that the president of the European Commission is proposed by the [democratically elected] heads of state of the member states, and that their proposed candidate has to be accepted by the [democratically elected] members of the European Parliament, and that each member state nominates a commissioner, and that this group of people as a whole have to be accepted, again, by the the European Parliament.

Also, it's not a simple "yes/no" ability for the parliament. They certainly can (and do) modify proposed legislation.

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That's not what a representative democracy looks like. In a representative democracy, every citizen has equal power to have a say in how the country runs, but they loan that power to people that they believe will represent their interests. To illustrate what's wrong with the EU model of representative democracy, let's use an analogy... imagine you're a football manager and you choose 11 players to play a game of football. If those players then chose other players to play on their behalf, you'd have something to say about it, right? It's the same thing with a democracy, the loan of power is only designed to be shared with the person or group you pick to do the job, they shouldn't have the right to give up that power to let someone else run the show. If the role of the Commissioners was merely that of assistants then I could accept that, but these unelected people are at the centre of how the EU functions, and have greater control of the direction of the EU than the elected officials. Do you not see any problems with that?

I agree that there are indeed many problems with the commission. (And I so wish that Viviane Reding had been president rather than Juncker.)

Just wanted to clarify how things work, as many have no idea. And for all its faults, I certainly don't think it's reason enough to leave the EU.

(Personally, as a Swede, I'm very happy to have the CJEU which is the only thing that can stand between Sweden and mass surveillance, as Sweden lacks a constitutional court, as - apparently - our local politicians cannot make bad laws.)

Yeah, that's true. It's almost like some monarch appointing a prime minister or something. Or imagine if ministers in general weren't being elected directly by the people, let alone all the people working in ministries doing their work for the minister. Unthinkable!

> It should be noted that the president of the European Commission is proposed by the [democratically elected] heads of state of the member states

A nitpick: The European Council, which appoints the President of the Commission, is composed of the heads of state or heads of government, which depends on the individual member state. E.g., for Britain, the PM (head of government) is a member of the Commission, not the Queen (head of state).

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