Hacker News Reader

That's not exactly true. Parliament can petition the Commission to legislate on something, and citizens can put forward proposal through the ECI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Citizens'_Initiative

And the Commission can ignore both, if they feel like it.

That's a very long way to anything that resembles democratic control.

> Parliament can petition the Commission to legislate on something

Has this ever happened in practice?