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Comment by e12e | Hacker News Reader

The commission is appointed and subject to the elected bodies; but afaik it can only propose legislation - it's the elected bodies that vote them into effect.

The EU isn't particularly democratic or transparent - but it is nominally democratic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission#Legitima...

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The commission is appointed by the member state governments. Those governments in turn are elected. Commission members are therefore rather similar to regular cabinet members in member states which usually aren't directly elected by neither populus nor parliament, but chosen by the head of government.

Personally, I think it would be better if the EU parliament chose the commission members. But it's not like the citizens of the EU had no say in who gets to be a commissioner at all: you can cast your vote differently in the next memberstate election if you don't like your government or the person it makes a commissioner.

At least Juncker was appointed president of the commission because his faction won the last EU parliamentary election.

Certainly not all EU Governments are elected. In The Netherlands, for example, you vote for Parliament. Parliamentary leaders then seek an agreement and propose a cabinet, which is formally instated by the King. When you cast your vote, you don't know who will be in government, nor do you have any say in it.

I'm a proponent of this system, just wanted to point out that governments are not necessarily elected. I think the same holds in many other EU countries, e.g., Belgium and Germany.

Uh, you may not be able to directly elect a government, but you still elect the parliament which then chooses the government. So yes, you have a say in it, by casting your vote in the parliamentary elections for the party you want to see in government.

And yes regarding Germany: Germans vote for parties in a parliamentary election; in the parliament a party or coalition of parties who can get the necessary majority votes will elect the Chancellor (head of government), who then is formally appointed by the President. The Chancellor then proposes cabinet members who are formally appointed by the President.

At least here in the UK, cabinet members are generally chosen from amongst the elected MPs, and if they're particularly terrible voters sometimes give them the boot at the next election, ending their career.

Of course, those regular cabinet members are the ones that appoint the commissioners, so it is one step further away :)0

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