The European Parliament has little actual power. With 375 million voters that are split by language and culture the electoral power is so diluted that most of the actual authority rests with the EU bureaucracy.
It votes on all laws so it has a strong power to stop bullshit. I fail to see how the amount of voters would remove that right. The power stands with the people who actually get out to vote.
It approves the laws but can’t originate the laws, which makes it unlike every other democratic legislature. That means that the European Commission actually in charge of steering the government, while the Parliament can only really approve or disapprove. Moreover, the Commission can directly promulgate regulations that have the force of law. So you have a putatively administrative organ that both initiates actual legislation and can itself enact regulations that are effectively laws. I don’t think there is any other democratic system that centralizes that much lawmaking authority in its administrative organ.
Optimally, democracy is participative. People don’t just vote, they govern themselves. Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” does a great job capturing what that looks like. Today, the most democratic systems are what you have in the Scandinavian countries. Small, homogenous electorates can achieve social consensus on what their society should look like. And then they can act through parliament to effectuate changes.
The E.U.-wide electorate is so big and fractious that it has basically zero ability to achieve social consensus. And the E.U. Parliament has no power to initiate legislation anyway. So “democracy” is reduced to rubber stamping the initiatives of the Commission, which are in turn largely decided by the permanent bureaucracy.
The European Commission is made up of people nominated by the European Council, which itself is made up of ministers from each EU member (i.e. they are elected). The commissioners have to pass a confidence vote from the European Parliament, which again is elected. They can also be be forced to resign by the parliament with a no-confidence vote.
(Side-note: the EU's sin isn't being anti-democratic. The sin is being so confusing that it's easy to make accusations of being anti-democratic. Because no one really understands it if they aren't paying attention. There's a European Council and a Council of the European Union - wtf)
> The European Commission is made up of people nominated by the European Council, which itself is made up of ministers from each EU member (i.e. they are elected). The commissioners have to pass a confidence vote from the European Parliament, which again is elected. They can also be be forced to resign by the parliament with a no-confidence vote.
What you’re describing is a system where the people with the key power of legislative initiative are insulated from the electorate by multiple layers of indirection. It’s kind of like the original U.S. executive. The President was elected by the Electoral College, by Electors nominated by state legislatures (i.e. they are elected). The point of that design was to insulate the executive from democracy.
But note that, even in that system, designed in 1789 by people who were skeptical of democracy, the most powerful body, the House, was directly elected. The House had legislative initiative—it can originate legislation. And it had exclusive legislative initiative over spending bills.
And note that the layers of indirection in the U.S. system were justified at the time on the basis that the federal government was one of limited powers and could only legislate in certain areas. The only bodies with plenary legislative power were the state legislatures, which were directly elected. But the E.U. isn’t a government of limited powers. It can legislate in any area.