A) Elected (though, indirectly, through the elected officials that you elect to be MEPs)

and

B) A body of law drafters and implementors with no powers to ascend anything to law by themselves.

The EC requires the EU parliament to vote on laws that it drafts, the EU parliament can require that laws be redrafted or amended. But the EU parliament is the only place a proposal can become law and those are our elected representatives voting.

Realistically the Commission are in charge. Because the so-called Parliament can't do anything except (at most) slow down the EU project a little bit, most people who run for election are just EU fanboys/girls who want to be close to the action. In the cases where they send new legislation back to the Commission for more work, it's usually to demand the EU award itself even more power than it was already doing. It doesn't act as any real check on the Commissions power. Even in the rare case of dispute, nothing stops the Commission just making minor changes and telling the Parliament to vote again, which they do. In fact "vote again" is the modus operandi of the entire EU project, whenever anything the Commission and related institutions wants gets rejected.

This setup is unique in the world and exists primarily to obfuscate the reality, as far as I can tell. Europhiles use it to claim the EU is "democratic" although the word Parliament means "the body of government that makes law" in English, and the EU Parliament doesn't meet that definition. There are free elections but they can't change anything meaningful, and as a result turnout has been falling steadily for decades, polls show the population don't trust the EU and see it as "out of touch" although fixing out of touch lawmakers is the entire point of elections. The whole thing is theatre intended to distract from the real power brokers: men like Selmayr and Juncker.

In good faith I'll argue the following:

Just because you do not directly elect the commissioners does not mean that they are "unelected". You can make the case that a garbage worker is "elected", but that would be by civil servants (by way of interview) but that is a stretch beyond the pale and a straw man (in all but the most charitable perspectives).

You're right about the dwindling EU election turnout but this is largely fuelled by a lack of campaigning; most people don't even bother with EU politics because they're more concerned with their countries politics. The EU itself suffers from being uncharismatic and so open that it's a sea of information (which ends up seeming opaque because there's just /so/ much information). I suspect this will largely change with brexit as people are waking up to what the EU actually is. Largely in the UK for example everything that was a political failure was blamed on the EU and those lies are the foundation of what caused brexit.

The EU has many, many flaws, but characterising it as undemocratic is flatly incorrect.

> although the word Parliament means "the body of government that makes law"

Technically parliament is an ancient french word that means "speaking", (akin to parley) but that's a digression. What I largely meant was that while the parliament itself cannot draft law, however it is the only body that can give ascent to a draft-legislature to make it law.

That is not undemocratic, that is the definition of democracy with a sprinkling of civil service.

In equally good faith, I'll observe that our disagreement is because I'm using the word "elected" to mean "has run in some sort of election and won by getting votes". You appear to be using a rather different definition, something like "some N number of appointment steps away from someone who directly ran in an election and won" where N is maybe 2 or 3 depending how you count (local politician -> head of government -> commissioner), except that commissioners are appointed one per country, no? So it's not like all the heads of state get together and run a giant interview process. Rather, the positions are dished out on a national basis. If the UK or Germany happens to field half the most qualified candidates that doesn't matter, Portugal will still get a commissioner.

most people don't even bother with EU politics because they're more concerned with their countries politics

Yes, oddly they care more about the elections where candidates discuss the issues they care about. The top concerns of populations in every country in the EU, according to the EU's own polling, are quite consistent - immigration then terrorism.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-eurobarometer/immigrati...

How many MEPs are talking about restricting immigration or controlling terrorism? When was the last time you heard about a tightly fought European election where "tough on immigrants" was a factor?

It never happens because the Parliament is irrelevant; if someone wanted to waste their time getting elected to the EP on such a platform it'd be useless, Juncker has said "borders are the worst invention of politicians" and thus the issue dies there.

The EU is fundamentally uninterested in the top concerns of its citizens and there is no way to change that via voting. That is the ground truth and why the EU is correctly described as undemocratic.

That's a very long way to anything that resembles democratic control.

Has this ever happened in practice?

The most effective way to change one's political environment since man could walk, enlightenment and democracy notwithstanding.

Democracy was a nice dream, but ultimately the only way to get anything done has always, is and will always be violence.

Which I am not advocating, because then the state will do violence to me.