Not necessarily. One can eg want more power to the actually elected part of the EU structure and less power to the commission. Imo electing or not a president does not necessarily help with democracy, as the US example shows. And in europe most countries do not have a strong presidential system, except France and 2-3 others. So I doubt having "strong elected president" is what people actually have in mind for the EU.

People bring this up they may consider EU to be historically a centralized power structure. Whether it can practically be actually democratized or not is a matter of debate. One can bring up the democratic deficit of EU without harbouring actual thoughts or hopes that it can be fixed.

That would be the next step but they seem to be getting on fine with an unelected president.

EU already has a constitution (?)

In actual democracy, like ancient Athens, most offices are filled by sortition rather than election.

Election is characteristic of oligarchy, where a few people make decisions for the many. Usually the few are supposed to be more qualified for or deserving of office, and election is a way of deciding which volunteer is most worthy.

In democracies, everyone is assumed to be equally qualified, as governing requires no special knowledge beyond some basic morality. So, lists of volunteers for office are compiled and names drawn from those lists at random, and for every office something like nine names are drawn, so volunteers can split their time between public service and their private affairs. This random selection also prevents the creation of political parties: you can’t get randomly selected by spending more on a campaign.

So, election of officers is oligarchic, rather than democratic. Democracies have votes instead on legislation, declarations of war snd peace, and jury trials.

Well funnily enough, virtually all the constituent countries of the EU do put the election of their president to a democratic vote.

This is incorrect. The European Parliament elects the Commission President, not the European Council. In fact, von der Leyen narrowly squeaked through in 2019, getting 383 votes with 374 votes required (with her making it being attributed to her hawkish stance on Russia to an extent, which supposedly earned her additional Eastern European votes).

The European Council does nominate the candidate and infamously in 2019 overrode the informally agreed on spitzenkandidaten process, by which the nominee of the political group (EU Parliament equivalent of parties) with the most seats should have gotten the nomination.

That said, the EU Parliament is not bound by the nomination. It can very obviously reject any candidate it doesn't like, though of course the dynamics of candidate selection are heavily influenced by the European Council's nomination power.

But yes, there's nothing per se undemocratic about it and I'm a bit bewildered by people asking for direct election of the President rather than cleaning up the existing process, given that most EU member states elect their heads of government indirectly.

The appointment of the commission president is quite different from how the German chancellor is determined:

1. The majority of representatives in Bundestag represents (up to rounding issues) the majority of voters.

2. Parties advertise their chancellor candidate before the election, and voters take that into account when choosing which party to vote for.

Being chosen democratically isn't a black and white thing. It becomes gradually less democratic as you separate voter intent and outcome further. This isn't just a function of how the election process itself works, but also voters being informed.

Practically no voter would have predicted von der Leyen becoming commission president when they cast their vote, making her appointment not very democratic.

Her doublethink and doublespeak needs repeated illumination.

She has never been part of any democratic process to put her in that role. In a parliamentary democracy the prime minister is an elected minister who leads his or her party. Von der leyen is a technocrat. “Demos” means “the people” en masse.

Or the President of the US, which is also appointed by the democratically elected Electoral College...

> You keep spreading this, but the eurocommssion president gets appointed by the European Council, which consists of democratically elected heads of state.

It does not matter who elects the EU commission, there needs to be a popular vote across the EU for every commissioner job and the EU Commission head. What we have today in EU is pure BS: every country gets a commissioner based on that country's influence within the bloc and every time a new country joins the EU, a new commissioner role just happens to be created.

I want to be able to choose from a number of candidates who should run the EU, not the prime minister or the president of a member country.

Everybody who holds even a little power in the EU construct needs to be voted by EU citizens, not appointed by who knows who.

This second- or third-hand "democracy" is not a democracy at all.

To be frank, it is a quite eccentric way to appoint an executive leader: imagine POTUS being chosen by state governors.

> She is no less democratically elected than the prime minister of a parliamentary republic

Well I would say this is arguable. Sure, her power is ultimately resulting from a popular mandate. But, if your country elects the head of state directly (say, France) then there are two "hops" between a popular mandate and the head of the EC. Whereas, if you are in a parliamentary system, it's three "hops" (MPs -> head of State -> EC president).