Ylva Johansson (the creator) didn’t get into the EU by being popular in Sweden, she was appointed by the Social Democratic government in 2019, and commissioners aren’t elected anyway. For Brussels the boxes she ticked (party loyalty, decades of ministerial experience, gender balance in von der Leyen’s Commission) mattered more than domestic approval. In fact, governments often use the EU to park politicians who’ve lost their shine at home. Now she’s mostly known for pushing “chat control” (mass scanning of private messages), which only makes the disconnect clearer: an unpopular figure at home ends up driving some of the EU’s most controversial policies.