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[Opinion] Europe is selling its soul to Trump
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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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Don't forget the politician we didn't vote for though: Ursula von der Leyen. Her selection process was undemocratic as hell and she's one of the main people responsible for the so-called deal we got.
Can you explain more/point me somewhere where I can read more about this?
Here. Basically before the 2014 election, a new process of a "lead candidate" proposed by the European parliament was introduced to make the appointment of the president of the commission a bit more democratic. That worked in 2014 and for the 2019 election, the parliament once again selected a lead candidate. However this time, the commission just decided to ignore it and instead chose Von der Leyen.
in short contries vote for representatives (smaller countries have less, bigger more) and representatives then can vote who will be a EU commision president (as far as i understand).
I belive Kurzgesagt has a great video about EU diplomatic system if you want to know more.
Von der Leyen isn't the problem here. Also, implying that she may be apponted undemocratically because we didn't elect her directly is naive at best and outright dishonest at worst... if you go by that rule you'll find loads of "undemocratic" positions (including, eg. for Italy, the head of state, the prime minister and all other ministers, the heads of the two branches of the parliament, etc..)
Anyway, the problem is that EU countries keep trying to one-up each other: it's divide et impera, but, since we are already divided, foreign powers can leisurely skip to the "impera" part (TBH Putin has been quite effective on the "divide" part too).
I never said that. No, it's because we had a democratic process set up for the previous election, which the commission chose to ignore this time. See also my other comment. It's not just me saying this either, much of the parliament was furious at the way she was chosen.
That makes even less sense.
The parliament had a chance to say if they approved of von der Leyen or not and they said yes.
That gives von der Leyen much more democratic legitimacy than whoever the Spitzenkandidat of the biggest party happened to have (also... is picking the nominee of the biggest party, regardless of alliances, democratic?).