Comment by sscaryterry

No, he has a point. There are various degrees of democracy, between direct and many degrees of indirection. VDL is certainly not a good level of democracy:

- Elections are so rare (every 5 years) and encompass so many huge life-altering choices (VDL being one of the criteria only) that it's not democratic. The Swiss vote every important law, like "Should we buy fighter jets".

- De facto, party health is part of democracy (look at the Rwanda: It is absolutely possible to have a genocide made by democracies, and it is in fact more frequent than dictatorships) and network effects have made that European parties don't represent the people's will,

- Europe dispatches money to countries that need convincing, like Scottland, while wearing the mature members' citizen to the bone. We can't even have decent roads or internet here, while newcomers are super-happy to join ("I'm happy because Europe brought wealth and economic development!!!" - yeah look in 20 years). Money flushing around Europe trying to bribe citizens groups into staying, which makes opposition impossible. The EU is too chicken to let citizen vote every 20 years on whether we should stay in Europe, because then answer would be a big NO.

- The kill switch didn't even work, countries can't leave, or there is retaliation. Not only UK but France voted against the new treaties in 2005, the president still signed them.

The EU is the most lazy level of democracy. It's a knee-jerk reaction to say that VDL can be removed from office by the citizen.

How should EU citizens vote at that next election if they are unhappy with von der Leyen's actions as President of the European Commission in order to remove her if enough other voters agree?

Clearly you have no idea how the head of EC is chosen. Because of the two only Trump was actually elected by the people.

Technically, the US president is also not elected by the people but by the electors, which in many ways is comparable to how the EU elected the EU Commission President.