Reply to post: Re: First Past the Post

Re: First Past the Post

Another minor niggle. The number of times we hear usually the Brexiterrs moaning about the unelected EU commissioners (they are elected of course.)

kmac499,

EU Commissioners are not elected. They're appointed by each EU government picking one and the EU Commission President then giving them a particular portfolio. There's then a hearing into each one from the relevant committee of the European Parliament, though they don't actually have the power to reject them. However the Parliament does have the nuclear option of rejecting the whole Commission, so usually if someone is particularly objectionable the Commission President goes back to the relevant government and asks for a new candidate.

So they're basically appointed in exactly the way you object to with cabinet ministers. Even though the majority of them have been elected to Parliament individually. As well as maintain a majority support in Parliament or the government falls.

The EU Commission President is appointed by the Council of Ministers (heads of government of the member states), although also subject to the approval of the Parliament.

In an odd twist, at the last elections a bunch of the Parliamentarians got together and created a new wrinkle in the system. Without authority of the treaties they asserted the right of the Parliament to pick the Commission President. In order to either insert some democratic legitimacy, or assert some power for themselves. Or both. This was called the Spitzenkandidaten system, as I think it was dominated by German MEPs. Each European party therefore picked a candidate, and said they'd veto any other the governments picked, than the one from the largest party. The Council of Ministers chose not to fight this, hence we got Juncker, as the candidate of the EPP. Even though the EPP didn't stand in all members of the EU.

It's not particularly democratic, partly because the Commission can often ignore the Parliament, but mainly because it's so remote from the people, who aren't really heterogeneous enough to form a demos anyway. On the other hand, it's clearly not an anti-democratic outrage either. Anyone using EUSSR so misunderstands the system as to be worth ignoring, in the same way I ignore all comments using "sheeple", "MMT", "Lamestream media" etc.