This series of articles examines and fact checks some of the Vote Leave and Britain Stronger in Europe arguments for voting to Leave or Remain in the European Union. For a short summary of both sides’ arguments look here.
Vote Leave Claim: Turkey in the EU
The unelected European Commission
Verdict: Depends on how elected or unelected you think national governments are.
Analysis:
There isn’t much here, but there is quite a lot to it. The claim is that the European Commission is unelected. You hear this a lot from the Leave side, and very little countering it from the Remain side, so I thought I’d take a minute to explain how the EU actually works with regards to the Commission.
First we have to know what we mean by “elected”. The European Commission isn’t elected by the voters of any EU country, or by the EU as a whole, in that case is “unelected”, but if you go by the dictionary definition, things become a bit more confusing. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines “elect” as “choose (someone) to hold public office or some other position by voting”.
The European Parliament has the power to vote in and vote out the Commission, so in essence, if we go with the widest definition of “elected” then the Commission is elected by the Parliament.
You have to decide for yourself how far you want to take the meaning of the term “elected”, but it isn’t as clear cut as anyone would like to think. In the UK we don’t elect our Cabinet – which is the national equivalent of the Commission. In the UK, we elect the Parliament who in turn decide on the Prime Minister and he decides on the Cabinet. In the EU, we elect the Parliament, and each member state elects their national government, and the national governments (The Council) propose the Commissioners and the Commission President, and the Parliament votes of them.
In essence, it isn’t much less democratic than our own national government.
(Commission actually doesn’t always refer solely to the Commissioners like I am here, it sometimes refers to all the people who work in the Commission, and the vast majority of them would be akin to the Civil Service in the UK.)