We do have direct accountability through the European Parliament, and the MPs I was talking about (the members of the EU Council) are the Prime Minister and the cabinet ministers. I have to assume that they are capable of thinking a bit beyond their local constituency issues.

But I actually think that none of these technicalities matter that much. What's missing in the EU democratic process is an EU wide platform for debate, a platform for campaigning on EU wide issues.

This is made more difficult by the fact that we speak so many different languages and that English proficiency is very unevenly distributed among the economic classes (and among countries).

I think what could spark EU wide political debates and allow campaigners to create real political pressure on an EU level would be a directly elected EU president. A face that you can properly hate and blame and really really want to kick out of office :)

I am very much in favour of the United States of Europe, modelled after the USA.