You keep spreading this, but the eurocommssion president gets appointed by the European Council, which consists of democratically elected heads of state.
She is no less democratically elected than the prime minister of a parliamentary republic... They get appointed by the democratically elected parliament.
Her doublethink and doublespeak needs repeated illumination.
She has never been part of any democratic process to put her in that role. In a parliamentary democracy the prime minister is an elected minister who leads his or her party. Von der leyen is a technocrat. “Demos” means “the people” en masse.
> You keep spreading this, but the eurocommssion president gets appointed by the European Council, which consists of democratically elected heads of state.
It does not matter who elects the EU commission, there needs to be a popular vote across the EU for every commissioner job and the EU Commission head. What we have today in EU is pure BS: every country gets a commissioner based on that country's influence within the bloc and every time a new country joins the EU, a new commissioner role just happens to be created.
I want to be able to choose from a number of candidates who should run the EU, not the prime minister or the president of a member country.
Everybody who holds even a little power in the EU construct needs to be voted by EU citizens, not appointed by who knows who.
This second- or third-hand "democracy" is not a democracy at all.
> there needs to be a popular vote across the EU for every commissioner job and the EU Commission head.
Your talking points are misinformed and pretty ridiculous which makes me think you're a troll rather than having a faithful argument. But on the off chance you are trying to have a real discussion: The Council and Parliament both get elected and the commission cannot do anything without them, so it's not like the system is not democratic.
I don't see the US asking for their attorney general or supreme court justices to be democratically elected. At some point you have to trust that the people you actually elect will appoint people who know what they're doing.
Just because there's someone in the chain you're not doing a round of elections on doesn't make the system bad. You need the system to have agency at some point.
To be frank, it is a quite eccentric way to appoint an executive leader: imagine POTUS being chosen by state governors.
> She is no less democratically elected than the prime minister of a parliamentary republic
Well I would say this is arguable. Sure, her power is ultimately resulting from a popular mandate. But, if your country elects the head of state directly (say, France) then there are two "hops" between a popular mandate and the head of the EC. Whereas, if you are in a parliamentary system, it's three "hops" (MPs -> head of State -> EC president).
She is no less democratically elected than the prime minister of a parliamentary republic... They get appointed by the democratically elected parliament.