It was a (steel and coal) corp affordances union to begin with, so it's no wonder it's pandering to business rather than civic interests after all.
Von der Leyen is corrupt yet shapes EU policy without backlash, and the citizenry is left to pay the price, precisely because the EU pretends to speak for the people.
Selection/rejection of the European Commission president (there is no such thing as the EU president) is indirect democracy, not popular vote. But it is still representative and democratic.
US contrast: in the US, citizens also don't vote for the President directly. Instead, we use a two-step system centered on the Electoral College.
Hypocrisy: if anyone (especially us American citizens) are going to argue that europeans should get to vote directly for the President of the EU commission, then they should also argue strongly to get rid of the Electoral System in the US and let the presidential popular vote be the decisive factor.
I don't think that's an unpopular idea as of 25 years ago now. With current technology, nationals should be a direct democracy (and with ranked choice votes, not FPtP), the house should be doubled (if not tripled since we stopped growing 100 years ago), and the supreme court should be expanded to at least 15.
And that's just the start of small updates we need for government.
And the democracy part which you got wrong. That's the salient point.
The EU is basically run by the Council, who are the national governments, all of whom are elected.
It's incredibly depressing that this keeps needing to be repeated when its been this way since the inception of the EU (with a small hiatus where we were gonna get a constitution).
The Commission can propose laws, but unless the Council (mostly) and Parliament (theoretically) agree, they won't happen.