It is not a miscalculation, by design the European Commission is proprietary and almost always make proprietary decisions that often have to be corrected by the relative toothless European Parliament.
If anything, I wish that the EU structures are reformed into something that resembles a "standard" modern democratic government with a clear balance of powers. But it seems people are preparing to tear it all down and plunge Europe into the next war instead of fixing it.
Oh, and just to finish my rant: even RMS calls for the dismantling of the EU! His argument is exactly that it is too friendly to corporations in his opinion. I came close to walking out of the room in anger when I heard him advocate for that. Don't throw good things away as long as there is a chance to fix them.
The problem with that is that it would give democratic legitimacy to the EU parliament and commission. This would then place them in conflict with national parliaments.
The EU is by design a "Union of States", preserving national sovereignty, rather than a "Union of people".
In Germany, USA, etc, the demos elects the president, in the EU the president is proposed by the council of ministers. EU parliment is not allowed to do likewise.
This way ultimate power lies with the member nations, not in the Brussels hierarchy.
Not exactly. The German Bundespräsident is elected by the Bundestag (although that position is arguably mostly representative anyways).
Even the German chancelor is suggested by the Bundespräsident and then voted in by the Bundestag. Of course it's usually the leader of the largest faction in th last federal election that's suggested, but that's technically not a requirement.
It is a quirk of the German constitution that the executive positions in the government are voted on by the legislative branch and not by the people directly. It prevents populists from gaining easy access to important government positions.
This is a slight simplification. Only the executive branches of the state governments hold power over all branches of the EU. The legislative branches of the member states get none of that. This imbalance is part of what makes the EU lawmaking such an opaque (and arguably even exploitable) process.
That is, it has limited impact on purely national matters, or military or foreign affairs.
It's like the NIH syndrome, but for politicians.
> I didn't build it, so it sucks. Let's start from scratch, with me building it!
In a democracy, politicians need a power base made up of followers (future voters). The more, the better. And when the right conditions meet, sowing a seed of destructive opposition leads to a plentiful harvest of loyal voters.
Why people fall for this mostly nationalistic rhetoric that opposes the EU is quite complex. I don't think that I have a good enough picture of that to say more about it.
I see no signs that RMS is going that far when forming his views. This makes him single minded, and I am tempted to say, even in a way very similar to religious zealots. I agree that open software and hardware can be good things. But you need to draw boundaries in practice. And when RMS seems to ignore these or moves them further out than anyone else would, he comes across as what you described so vividly.