[wwtrv]

> The role you're talking about is more like that of the Speaker of the House in the US or the UK. Both are elected by members of the chamber, not a popular vote.

Not really. The commission president is certainly (not even remotely) the equivalent of the Speaker in the British parliament (maybe a slightly closer in the US).

Not even Prime Minister would be a real equivalent since the commission isn't appointed by the parliament and it has relative very little say in what the commission does. In certain ways it's not fundamentally that different from some of the pseudo-democratic European states in the 1800s where the job of parliament was only to rubber stamp the laws written by the appointed government (of course there is no equivalent of the King/Emperor).

[ProxCoques]

I'm confused. We started off talking about how the President of the European Parliament is elected, but now you're talking about the European Commission. Those are separate bodies, the latter drafts laws. There's no country that elects the head of its civil service, is there?