b'Originally, larger member states hadwas very keen to state to the European two Commissioners each, while smallerParliament that he had been elected. states had just one. Following the 2004Barroso emerged as President of the Enlargement, that changed. Now, eachCommission via an opaque, secret process. member state has one Commissioner,He was the only candidate. There was then regardless of its size.4 an election.Again, Barroso was the only candidate put forward to MEPs. That was the The evidence is clear and compelling. Sincesystem until 2014. the UK joined the EU in 1973, its votes in the Council of Ministers, percentage of MEPs,EU institutions are not democratically number of Commissioners and percentage ofaccountable and the people involved hold UK staff in the Commission have all declineddemocracy in ill-concealed contempt. substantially. It was thus counter-intuitive,However, even by their standards, the indeed bizarre, for the UK to be a vociferousprocess by which a man - and it has always supporter of more countries joining the EU.been men so far - became President of the Each new member state further diluted UKCommission was impossible to justify - to influence.use the vernacular, did not pass the smelltest. The powers that be then came up with As seen above, the UK Commissioner wasthe so-called Spitzenkandidatenprocess. scarcely important. If this were amateur dramatics, Lord Hill, and subsequently SirAt one level, Spitzenkandidatenmay be Julian King, would have been the third speardeemed to test everyones ability to spell. carrier from the left.Some European political parties came up with a candidate. The political party It is the President of the Commission who isachieving the highest number of MEPs thenimportant. During 2009-2014, that was Senhor Barroso, who24'