I'm pro-EU but there's plenty to be unhappy about. For example the European Parliament can't introduce legislation... that power is reserved for the European Commission, which seems to use it in a particularly pro-lobbyist manner.

You forgot to mention that the commission can also bypass the parliament to get laws approved, in the emergency procedure the commission and the council approve legislation.

But both are still filled by people appointed by democratic governments of member states.

And still that only applies to handling "a financial crisis" by giving aid to member state(s) and needs qualified majority (85% in this case so 24 out of 28 votes in both the Council and Commission). Basically how the Council has been setup is that you usually need a unanimous or 20 out of 28 votes to get anything done.

I don't think that's true. It applies to everything they consider emergency unless I'm misreading. Also: they decide what constitutes an emergency. They could use this for any reason, for anything. They ARE using it, as a threat, for the econimic crisis.

Those votes are only necessary for things like new member additions (which are indeed mostly what the council is for). I think this requires a mere majority, which presumably is equivalent to having a majority in the commission in practice.

But even if it were true, and the only power they have is to fund or defund member states' governments ... that's not a real limitation to their power.

And lastly, if all the power is in the hands of the executive, as it is in Europe, that does not constitute a modern democratic state.

Except that what really happens is that the people that get appointed to the EU Commission are usually political hacks that either never had popular support in their country or lost it (see Günther Oettinger for example, that guy has been commissioner for three different things by now, is totally incompetent and can't even speak proper English). They are usually appointed through party politics not by competence and people care so little that literally anyone could be appointed anyways.

The elections for EU Parliament are not taken seriously in most countries and have had extremely low turnout, by now it is full of right wing idiots from various countries.

You conveniently left out the various side channels that don't even formally exist as European institutions, such as the Troika that decided on the fate of Greece, or the regular meetings of the finance ministers of the Euro Zone, which have had tremendous influence on the fiscal politics of smaller member states. Not to mention the various measures to deal with the Euro crisis by the ECB with the approval of a few large member nations, that cleverly bypassed and sidestepped many treaties and the additional European financial institutions that were created.

It is the government of your country that appoints their member for the Commission. If they appoint shitty ones blame them.

For example the current Finnish representative is Jyrki Katainen who is the previous prime minister and his party (Kokoomus) is still a member in the ruling coalition. Even though he probably isn't the most liked person anymore (his prime minister era didn't go that well) he is still well liked within his own party and they probably traded some minister seat for getting him into the Commission. Shit is politics like always but I wouldn't go as far as say that the EU is undemocratic.

Also the ability to speak English isn't that important in EU level. All the big EU institutions are in Luxembourg or Brussels which pretty much makes French and German the main languages. Still there is plenty of translators available when needed.

If Germany wants to keep sending Günther Oettinger as their Commissioner then the only people you can blame are Merkel and her party. Again democracy. If it matters to you make it a point in your elections. I know most people don't as in my experience most people don't have a clue how the EU works. Many of my friends think the Commissioners are just appointed by some elite instead of being each country sending their own just like the head of state is in the Council. Still you can't call a system undemocratic just because people choose not to engage in the process.

The point is whoever gets appointed as commissioner is usually two degrees removed from an election. Nobody makes a determination which party to vote for by the commissioner that party will appoint, it is not part of the political discourse during elections either. This is deliberate, as is framing their job as something technical and boring.

> President proposed by the Council and voted on by the Parliament

Since the previous election, the Council does not pick the candidate itself. Rather it automatically proposes the Presidential candidate of the party that won the European Parliament elections. And each party selects their candidate before the election, and they also campaign and have debates.

That kind of makes sense. As for anything to become a law/directive at the end it has to pass in the parliament and thus needs to have a majority coalition there behind it. So it is a bit useless to have the guy running to Council (and thus having a huge say on its agenda) who is against the platform of the majority coalition in the Parliament.