Europe 'deserves to elect its leaders' - by Joe Coney.

There is an important democratic gap in the EU. At Stronger Europe we believe the president of the European Commission should be directly elected.

The Commission president currently determines the agenda in the Commission and he appoints the 27 commissioners who staff its ministries. The person who fills this role should have the legitimacy which the European electorate conferred on him.

There are some who disagree with the need for change, pointing to the fact that the Commission is approved by the democratically European Parliament.

An elected Commission president would be responsible for the actions and policies of the commissioners he appoints. His election would grant him the mandate to do this, a mandate that is lacking in European politics.  Currently the technocratic functioning of the major European institutions may have some advantages: flexibility, rapidity of decision-making and quality of analysis, but we have also seen its limits of it.

Decisions made in the early hours, at summits detached from the reality of Europe, by a handful of European politicians, some elected, but significantly some not, have failed repeatedly.

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