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by realityking 959 days ago
The European Parliament does get an outright veto or rather the opposite, without explicit approval from the EP commissioners can‘t be appointed.

The catch, they can only approve (or not approve) them as a group. Usually the parliament will indicate which nominated members they find unacceptable and those respective countries nominate new candidates.

Reference: https://www.europeactive.eu/news/european-parliament-gearing...

Arguably this is more democratic than how we appoint government ministers in Germany. The chancellor gets elected by parliament and then appoints (and fires) ministers on their own authority without any check by parliament.

1 comments

> The catch, they can only approve (or not approve) them as a group.

OK, that's what I thought, but I had doubts, because I read something contrary recently. Thanks for clarifying.

Can German chancellors appoint anyone they like as ministers, or do they have to appoint someone who has been elected to the Bundestag? Because commissioners are not elected.

So, as I recall, there's been exactly one instance in which the EU Parliament has rejected all the Commissioners; they sacked the lot, because it was evident that they were mostly corrupt. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

> Can German chancellors appoint anyone they like as ministers, or do they have to appoint someone who has been elected to the Bundestag?

They can appoint anyone to ver the age of 18 with German citizenship. It‘s common that several ministers are not members of the Bundestag.

In fact, the chancellor doesn‘t even have to be a member of the Bundestag. Though he obviously gets elected by the whole parliament.