Like many other system in the World, elections are to chose people's representatives, not to chose the government nor the technical apparatus (like the EU commission).
The US president is one notable example of non elected position.
Anyway, the proposals must be approved by the parliament, which is elected directly by the EU people in number proportional to the population of the single countries and then ratified by the single EU parliaments, which are again elected by the people.
I wouldn't exactly call it "abundance of unelected regulatory positions".
On the other hand though: Europeans kinda suck as a blob. See Italy electing fascists again, Germany stagnating for decades under Conservative control, basically everything east of Germany etc. Etc. The parliament is dominated by Conservative authoritarian forces as well. In that sense EU legislature is just too good at representing it's people.
I gave a speech to my computer science course when the new copyright directive was about to go into its final trilogue round in 2018. Wide agreement in discussion afterwards, but not a single student cared enough to make their wishes known to their MEPs. If even they don't do it, i can only say we're getting what we asked for.
That’s because when some of them do they get threatened with sanctions while others can simply dictate policy. The eu is not an equal members club.
She is appointed and vetted by the parliament, who is elected directly by the people.
So the commissioners do not come from Mars, they are emissaries of the elected parliament.
[0]: https://www.thorn.org/about-our-fight-against-sexual-exploit...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/21/meta-wont-allowe...
Oh.
We all know who these people are.
It's a public discussion.
> and help with anything that gets them far from public and government
It simply means winning the elections at the EU parliament, which, unfortunately for Mullvad, it's not something they will ever be able to do.
Mullvad posts might be popular here on HN, maybe, but they move no more than a few thousands votes in the EU (we are 450 million people).
Show me another place where 27 countries live peacefully together and jointly govern an entire sub continent, by collaborating together and discussing publicly about their political proposals.
Of course it has its problems, of course it takes a lot of effort to bring 27 countries together on a subject, of course there will be controversial opinions among its members, depending on the POV (a lot more people in EU agree with the chat control proposal than those who disagree), but that's the price of democracy.
The price is having to make compromises every day.
It means putting together and listening to the people who say "immigration must be stopped" and "countries should have no borders" and everything in between, but no side tries to silent the others using violence.
What you're talking about is the tyranny of the majority, which is not democratic and is not categorized as democracy, in a democracy the effect of the majority taking it all is moderated by a carefully balanced separation of powers.
For example in a democracy the justice system is usually independent from the government.
> Not having privacy is a consequence of authoritarianism, be it for a greater good (to find child abusers) or not (to find dissidents).
But we have privacy in Europe, unlike most places in the World.
Blindly repeating that EU is authoritarian doesn't make it true.
Yes, Europe is big, but those "dramatic decisions" need to be ratified by your "local" government, that it's probably more distant than the EU commission.
At least in the EU commission they do their job, which is to write proposals, local governments lately have only been preoccupied by their own chairs.
And it's basically the only place where "dramatic decisions" can be discussed right now in Europe.
I would love that my National government focused on "privacy" and "E2E encryption" and sparkled a discussion about those topics in the parliament, instead of doing this:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/italy-migrant-deaths-mini...
Switzerland is very democratic. People get to vote on individual laws, instead of having 3 different layers of abstraction between who you vote for and what laws are passed.