I find it somewhat disturbing that this sort of thing is not considered a career killer for politicians.
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Then why did so many vote extremist anti EU? There just has been EU election in germany and the nationalist gained a lot. And none of the big parties otherwise said a clear no to that, so what could I do, except vote a small party against that, but too small to really do something?
Voters care. But they see often no point in voting anymore.
There are many nationally disgraced politicians seating in the EP, EC or council. Only the ones in the EP were electible.
The people have correctly identified that a massive supranational unaccountable government is the problem, enabling corrupt people to keep ruling which undermines the core functioning of representative democracy.
So, even if they might not be explicitly elected to be in the EU governance, most of them have reached that spot through more or less democratic means. "More or less" because Prime Ministers are usually nominated not elected, but that's still as part of each country's democratic process.
It lately became en vogue to deny the problem completely and EU politics only got dumber from that.
If I see any issue with the way EU passes laws is with the terrible overhead of having three to four bodies that govern the whole process, from proposal to legislature, not necessarily with the way some participants get there.
Well for one because people already vode with the head of state in mind when choosing the party. Even if they were aware of the EU politicians of said party (which is never part of the campaign materials) then they now have even more things to compromise on with a single vote.
> If I see any issue with the way EU passes laws is with the terrible overhead of having three to four bodies that govern the whole process, from proposal to legislature, not necessarily with the way some participants get there.
Actually that's the EU's saving grace. The more people are affected by new legislation the more difficult and slower it should be to push that legislation through. The EU should be slow moving but instead we are constantly in a situation like this where bad laws are not far from being passed.
Maybe I'm thinking too hard about the problem, but my impression is that the role of the head of states in the Council is to represent to the best of their abilities their own countries. In that, there's nothing to compromise on when a citizen votes. If you think that person is the best to head your state, it tracks that they can do that once in the Council's chambers. I understand this can sound naive, but meh, European politics is already pretty complicated, having yet another corps of people that needs to be voted democratically feels like it adds another snag in the existing democratic process. And personally I strongly believe that anything that can be done to make it easier for citizens to materialize their democratic options the better for their nation and the EU.
I think Europe as a whole (alongside many other nations, really) suffers from having a disenfranchised and apathetic majority that prefers not to participate in elections, because they don't find representation, because it's an inconvenience, because "what's the point?", etc. All of these paper cuts lead to the results we see today after the EU parliamentary elections ended: more and more support for divisive politics. A better democratic process would drown these voices in the vast majority of moderate people in my opinion, and that's what we should strive for.
Having semi-elected officials as Councilmembers is such a small inconvenience in front of that.
Anyway, sorry for the long(ish) rant. To sum it up, I think the solution to assholes representing their countries in the EU Council is not yet another democratic process, but making it easier for everyone to cast their vote, so extreme options are less likely to crop up.