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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

They are appointed by the elected(the governments of the countries and the European Parliament, which are all elected).

When you say it like "they are not elected but appointed", you make it sound like some 3rd party is appointing them and you have no power on it but those who appoint the members of EC are the members of EP(elected every 5 years) and the national governments(elected accordingly to the local laws).

If you you want to make it sound undemocratic, you can say that the US president is elected by the electoral college and citizens of the USA have no way to vote for their president.

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> They are appointed by the elected

The more indirect the method is, the more control shifts from voters to lobbyists and insiders versed in the system.

IMHO that’s about centralization of power, not the directness.

How many businessmen you see going around and promoting EU? if it’s that easy to influence they should love it.

Here’s a quote from Anthony Hilton about the media magnate Murdock:

I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. ‘That’s easy,’ he replied. ‘When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.’”

I wished that was true...

much rather: he had to spend significantly more for them to do so...

So they are not elected? Right? Therefore they are not accountable to the public.

Fun fact, the American president and the British prime ministers are also not elected.

If you like to argue over technicalities, we can do that.

Who cares? I don't live in UK or USA. They can have whatever disfunctional system they want, doesn't mean I will tolerate it at my home because of that.

There are dictators elsewhere, should I have one at home too?

I am not a citizen of the UK nor from the US, if this system is enough for you, then by all means feel free to disagree.

In my book an elected official is someone who was voted in office. If you are not elected then you are appointed. If you are appointed you do not need to be accountable because the people cannot revoke your mandate nor can they vote you out.

To me it seems inconceivable that someone who was appointed can decide to bring forward such a law and not have to defend it.

As I said, EC members are appointed by the elected governments and EP and the EP members are directly elected. If you don't like it you can start or join a political movement to change it or political movement to exit the EU.

However it's not O.K. to go around claim that those people are appointees of 3rd parties and are agents of companies and rule with impunity and the EU citizens can't do anything about it. It's a misrepresentation of the reality.

It's like claiming that British PM and the US president are not elected. While technically true, it misrepresent the democratic system.

The individual commissioners are appointed by national governments in a completely opaque process.

The exact distribution of responsibilities of the EC and who is to lead the commission is determined through international diplomacy.

Sure, the democratically elected parliament can veto the commission. But not propose a new one.

To even start comparing it with elections for US president and British PM is disingenuous at best.

Is there any country that directly elects their government and its ministers?

The commission is appointed by the European council (i.e. prime ministers and presidents of the member states) and approved by the parliament (your directly elected representatives).

They _should_ absolutely be held accountable in the same way we hold ministers accountable in the member states.

Yes, most EU countries directly elect the parliament and the government is formed from the parliament members - usually the winning party/coalition, but not always. In some it's a tradition that the winning party leader gets the first shot at getting their cabinet approved by the parliament, then a second shot, and if they can't do it the president appoints somebody else.

Your ministers are appointed, no?

No, they are members of the parliament.

But they are not directly elected to ministerial positions.

In a parliamentary system (ie most countries in the EU) members of parliament are elected. Parliament appoints a premier. Premier appoints ministers with parliamentary approval.

EU commissioners are nominated by the member states subject to their own laws. Typically that means they are chosen by your elected government.

If you want a directly elected commissioner that’s a matter of national politics. Your country is free to change its laws to select a commission nominee via a national vote.

I don't want "a" directly elected commissioner.

I want a directly elected Commission. The same system would suffice - chosen by the elected parliament among its members.

That would actually be a great idea, because then political parties and voting citizens would have a bigger reason to try to win European elections. Probably would make the parliament less liberal-conservative too.

Your system is better than mine then.

> and not have to defend it

The commission has to defend their suggestions or they won't make it through council and parliament. And if an individual commissioner is only delivering suggestions that get voted down, they're not likely to get reappointed.

Is there room for improvement? Sure. Is this specific suggestion a complete piece of trash? Sure. Will that be different if we have some kind of presidential election on the EU level? Not so sure.

They're repeatedly suggesting things like this until the MPs are confused enough and vote yes. At least that's what happened with the copyright directive.

Just like with the migrant quotas that Hungary and Poland are boycotting. Meanwhile, the far right gets more votes because people are fed up with this BS and naïve enough to vote for them.

> people cannot revoke your mandate

Most elected position have an unrevokable mandate, unelected positions are typically easier to revoke.

> If you are appointed you do not need to be accountable

They need to be accountable to who can revoke their position, which is generally elected officials.

I am not defending the EU here, I am not well informed enough in that regard; I am just criticizing the false dycothomy of elected/appointed when electoral systems create a much bigger variance of effects.

It appears you don't understand the role of the directly elected EU parliament.

It can and has fired the entire Commission in the past, and it must approve EU legislation.

Much more fun to subscribe to a conspiracy theory about all-powerful people behind the curtain though.

While this is true in a practical sense for the British PM, it is only true in the most technical legal sense for the US President.

Yes; it is true that the Constitution provides for the election of electors, who will then choose the President.

But in fact, while the Electoral College makes the precise mechanism of election slightly indirect and the methods of weighting the votes byzantine, in any practical sense there's no question that the US president is elected, and not appointed.

Lots of important jobs aren't elected. But got the job by being elected repeatedly for other things.

Many important EU figures have been elected repeatedly for national parliaments, as national ministers or for leadership positions in major national political parties, and only after that got an EU job.

I think it's by design: The jobs are put together as a nationally/politically balanced team, picked from from a large set of candidates who have generally been accepted by national voters over a period of time.

"They are appointed by the elected(the governments of the countries and the European Parliament, which are all elected)."

The executive (governments) should not become legislators, under the principle of seperation of powers of Montesquieu.

> The executive (governments) should not become legislators, under the principle of seperation of powers of Montesquieu.

What if Montesquieu was just wrong and systems with fused or subordinated executive and legislative powers actually just work better in pretty much every way that separation-of-powers systems?

Yeah, the US unusually strongly applies Montesquieu in its Constitutional design, but the US isn't particularly well-governed among modern democracies. (Personally, I think the dominance of poor electoral methods and the resulting partisan duopoly is a bigger effect than separation of powers here, but...)

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