Political systems are sometimes described as being either efficient or democratic. The idea is that democracy, with its many compromises and enless debates, gets in the way of firm and decisive action. The founders of the EU believed this: they wanted to rise above petty nationalism and create an executive for Europe.
The result, fifty years later, is an organisation which is neither democratic nor efficient. The European Commission is not just undemocratic but antidemocratic, its members frequently having been rejected by domestic electorates or, in the case of Peter Mandelson, twice fired from the cabinet.
