European Parliament chief Jerzy Buzek has said EU commissioners should in future be directly elected rather than hand-picked by national governments.
Speaking on Monday (22 March) at the Humboldt University in Berlin, a venue where politicians like to air new ideas, Mr Buzek said it is time for a “parliamentarisation” of the commission.
Member states should be persuaded to “increasingly put their candidates for a seat in the commission on the European election lists, where they could occupy first place.”
This would make the commissioners “visible” for EU citizens and give them a “democratic mandate.”
“This would not just be of symbolic importance. The commission would have stronger democratic legitimacy and would be strengthened as an institution,” said Mr Buzek.
At the moment, each member state nominates one candidate to be their EU commissioner.
The process is a tangle of behind-the-scenes negotiating as each national capital tries to get the weightiest portfolio while not always having the purest EU community motives for sending their nominee to Brussels.