[repolfx]

In this case actually MEPs were told who to vote for by the Council. The Parliament was presented with a vote on who to run the Commission ... which had a single name on it. The only obtains were to vote for von der Leyen or not vote at all.

It's common for europhiles to describe this sort of process as democratic because the Council is made up of national leaders. Unfortunately there's a key detail that makes this step non-functional: Council meetings are held in secrecy. No minutes or voting records are published.

How was von der Leyen selected and why? Nobody knows outside of the national leaders themselves. And there are sadly good reasons to believe that they systematically lie to their populations about what happens in those meetings. For one, Juncker himself has complained about this: leaders support a policy in private at the Council level, then go back home and tell their populations they fought against it and are being forced to do it by the EU.

Given the staggering amount of mendaciousness and duplicity the current anti-Brexit Parliament has been revealing amongst the ruling classes, I have no doubt at all Juncker's complaint is valid. But of course if the EU wanted it could easily fix this: just make Council meetings public so people can see if their leader's acts in those meetings matches their acts back home.

The other problem is the number of levels of indirection. Politicians don't base campaigns on who they'll vote for as leader of the Commission. It's "democratic" only in tortured theory.