What this person is writing is correct. The reality of EU politics is anything but democratic. The EU is crowned by an unelected commission that does not serve the interests of the governed.
The background is pretty machiavellistic, though. There is a lot of money and influence to be managed. It is no secret that Ursula von der Leyen got her first mandate basically from Merkel, a reward for being her loyal subordinate for years.
It is thus as democratically legitimized as any ministerial role in any government, or as the US presidency.
Please do not spread disinformation.
What's more the Commission is more than one person, unlike the US presidency.
Do you call ministers in your country unelected? Would you call the US president unelected?
I agree the Comission doesn't serve the interests of the governed, but that's because the people keep voting against their own interests and vote in right-wing governments, which in turn appoints a right-wing commission, which then does the right-wing thing of selling out its people.
It is not a structural EU fault, it is the electorate that's to blame.
Don't know about emptysongglass's country, but in France, ministers are absolutely unelected. The president is directly elected, who then appoints the prime minister, who then "proposes" the other ministers of his government. There is no strict rule by which the prime minister is chosen, only a "habit" to choose from the "winning camp", which was not respected by Macron these last two times. There's also no rule for how the ministers are picked. As you can imagine, this is largely backroom deals.
The last two prime ministers have all been deemed unsatisfactory by the parties with the most votes in the last legislative elections and by those who voted for them (people voted directly for their representatives in the lower chamber of parliament). These prime ministers were from parties that scored lower in the elections.
The only elected body in the EU is the EU parliament which has practically no powers when compared to the commission. It can only vote on what the commission proposes, it cannot make its own proposals. It cannot overrule the commission. And the commission can make rules and regulations of its own, without involving the parliament. The most the parliament can do is hold up the process a little.
The EU is not democratic by any sensible measure. "But there is an election somewhere in the process" doesn't make a democracy. Many dictatorships, communist regimes and even monarchies do have an election somewhere in the process. The emperor has no clothes, and the EU isn't democratic. Any timid initiative to make it so has died ages ago. The last straw was the trumped up non-election of von-der-Leyen. Actually, the parliament should have filled her job with its candidate, as was promised before the election. After election day, that promise which was intended to introduce at least a whiff of democratic accountability, was instantly forgotten. von der Leyen was instated instead of the parliaments candidate by a back-room deal.
Is there any democratic power by your standards? You are moving the goal posts so far I don't think anything fits your narrow definition.
The US is actually more democratic than e.g. Germany, because the president is elected by the people (though indirectly), not by parliament. Therefore a political oligarchy could be prevented, because the majority in parliament and the president can check on each other, and the president is more accountable to the voters than to parliament.
Generally there is a sliding scale of course, but the less directly officials are elected, the less democratic a country is. A common example would be a soviet (engl. "council") republic, which isn't considered democratic at all, even though it has tons of elections: Each factory/town/village elects a local workers's council, which in turn elects a county council, which elects a regional council, which elects a state council, which elects a national council, which elects the council of ministers, which elects the chairman. Tons of filters that make absolutely certain that the will of the party and state always supercedes the will of the people.
The German president is mainly a figurehead with limited power. The office was stripped down after WWII.
The real power lies with the ministers, who can issue absolute orders that have to be obeyed without question. One of many results is that German prosecutors cannot be trusted with issuing EU wide arrest warrants and had the ability stripped from them the moment it was challenged in court.
Sorry for my being imprecise here, Germans tend to skip their own president(s) because, as you correctly state, they are mostly unimportant figureheads.
The US electoral college is an historical artifact that simply rubber stamps the votes of the States. The member states' heads of government make the decision themselves! The equivalent would be the electoral college simply voting for the president themselves.
Jesus christ.
That is... exactly what they are doing?
All of this is simple fact. I'm not sure what you're trying to get at.
The term presidential election is a euphemizing misnomer, more accurately it would be called presidential electoral college election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_electors_in_the_2016...
While there have been a tiny numbers of faithless electors in the past, they have never influenced the outcome of a presidential election. Furthermore, about 80% of electors are from states that have laws that require their electors to vote for the candidate who wins the state's popular vote.
The EU is governed by backroom deals and is extremely opaque. Adding to everything you said: there is no accountability, there is little presence of EU matters in newspapers, EU leaders hardly even attempt to communicate with their people (practically only von der Leyen or António Costa make public speeches).
Just compare: you surely know the names of all or almost all ministers of your country. Do you know the names of even 2 out of the 27 commissioners? Scrutiny of their doings and the laws that are proposed appear in news regularly. Does such scrutiny exist of EU institutions?
It's not a democracy.
Matter of fact, you're commenting on a news article about EU happenings right now.
If one is only the slightest bit informed, one has probably heard of Kaja Kallas, the foreign affairs commissioner or Maroš Šefčovič, the trade comissioner.
These are not some big secret names, but public figures with well-articulated positions that regularly hold press conferences.