Clarifying the reason for something is the antidote to that. And you don’t get to weasel out of that by saying you were making a more general point with your specific statement.

In this case: presidents in typical European parliaments are responsible for parliamentary proceedings. Who speaks when, what the rules of the debate are, how to resolve conflicts, etc. Mostly boring stuff, but stuff that is vitally important for functioning parliaments. They also actually chair the debate, so they are the ones who do the timekeeping and remind MEPs of that and they are the ones handing out sanctions if, I don’t know, someone makes antisemitic remarks about another MEP or something.

Since they set the rules for debate it is also typical that all political factions are in some way represented since this is a function where everyone should be represented. Bonus: since they chair the actual debates one person can‘t shoulder that.

So nothing to do with bureaucracy and everything to do with basic democratic principles.

> the European Commission retains the sole power of legislative initiative.

personally I used to be pro-EU

then I made the mistake of digging into how it actually works