• CÉLINE la Frenière tells us she resented the lack of democracy and the unaccountability of the EU (From botch-up to panic, January 4). It is a favourite Leaver falsehood which should be challenged.

I recommend a short article, “The EU institutions explained”, by Hussein Kassim, who is, or has been, professor of politics at the University of East Anglia.

Written in May 2016, it can be found at ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/the-european-union-the-institutional-system-explained/.

It says that the EU’s supreme political body is the European Council, composed of the heads of government of all member states, all of whom have been democratically chosen. It is there that the buck stops.

The European Commission, or strictly the College of Commissioners, is regularly described by lazy or malicious politicians and journalists as a group of “unelected bureaucrats”.

Professor Kassim says that the president of the commission is chosen by the party winning most votes in elections to the European Parliament and is elected by that Parliament. The president selects the other commissioners from persons nominated by national governments. The College of Commissioners only takes office once it is approved by the European Parliament, which has the right to require it to resign. The commission proposes EU laws, but they only become law if approved by the European Council and the European Parliament.

It sounds democratic and accountable to me.

STEPHEN HORNE
Romilly Road, N4