When companies spy on their customers/users it's a 4 million Euro fine, when member states want to track the phones of its citizens it's a human rights violation, but when the EU it self wants something similar or worse it's a question of safety.
The EU doesn't have security services. What you're referring to is what (primarily) the member states want and they try to get it at the EU level so they won't be in violation of EU laws
In any case this specific request is about adding additional safeguards in a new act, not about stopping an ongoing practice or blocking a regressive proposal like the chatcontrol issue
So the appointed by the elected will consult with the elected and come up(or already came up) with a proposal and the elected will vote on it.
This website is made by some interest groups(both from Italy) that want to pressure the elected to reject a certain proposal.
Nothing weird really, just politics of a democracy in action. If you agree with the position of these interest groups you can support them, if you don't care you can ignore them or if you disagree you can start a counter campaign.
The direct responsibility to the citizens concerns the elected ones. The commission is powerful but their power is restrained by the elected ones and the elected ones can replace the appointed ones if they are not happy with it.
Anyway, direct democracy exists only in few places, like in Switzerland. EU and most of the democratic world runs on representative democracies, that is you elect people who you trust that will work the best for your interests and send them in a fancy building to vote on stuff and hoping for the best.
The EU explicitly works for collective interest, not individual interest.
It is not really honest to say you can put layers upon layers of indirect representation and the democratic process would not suffer. Legitimacy is lost on the way.
The most powerful part is the Council, where each member government is represented and is the mechanism by which member states pool their sovereignty. Nothing happens without the (often required to be unanimous) agreement of the Council.
Recent case in point: an EU Commissioner stated that aid to Gaza would be cut in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks - this was quickly backtracked when a member state objected.
This is clearly false. The member states exist independently of the EU. If you get rid of the EU, all the states still exist. Which means the EU is something more than “just the member states”. The EU is obviously a governing body on top of and between the member states. There is an EU president, parliament, and other offices for crying out loud. There is no way you yourself can believe what you’re claiming.
You can load as much meaning as you like on top of it, but there's no external party. The president of the EU commission(there's no president of EU) is elected by the heads of the governments(the EU member state governments, elected by the people of that state) and approved by the EU parliament(directly elected by EU member state citizens). So, If one of the band members is elected by the other band members to be the lead singer, is that band member something external?
The exception is if I am an official, a public persona or a dissident of the country doing the spying. But for everything else the impact of your own government spying on you is much more relevant.
Of course situations were friendly states spy on each other notwithstanding.
States are allowed to have armies, corporations are not. States can send people with guns after you and lock you away, corporations can not. Do you think that's weird too? States hold more power than corporations because corporations exist only because states allow them to.
Now whether states are a good thing or not is another question of course.