Everything has to be voted for, some officials are appointed by others but that's no different to the UK where the PM isn't directly voted for by the country, they vote for their MP. I find the EU more democratic than the current UK system, for a start you have the House of Lords, I don't think any of those were voted in by the public.
The UK electors vote for their constituency MP. In voting for the particular MP, they can be 99.999999999% certain who that MP would support as Prime Minister. They can, equally, be 99.999999999% certain that they will not know who any Prime Minister will 'nominate' as an EU Commissioner on their behalf for the UK because it is never mentioned in the parties' manifestos. And they will never know who the Prime Minister will choose to vote for as Chief Commissioner beause that is never discussed in the GE manifestos either. That is what so many of us see as undemocratic.
Out of a thousand or so HoL members, about 850 were appointed by the same Politicos ( all parties ) who also decide(d) who to 'nominate' as EU Commissioners on behalf of the UK.
Same people, same system really - if you feel the HoL isn't democratic, I can't see how you can believe the appointment of EU Commissioners is democratic.
And don't get too hung up about cream cakes. I just used it as an example that moving anything from anywhere to anywhere else in a very short time critical delay is entirely possible these days. It might be cream cakes today, but there could also be a 280kg drill bit travelling from Texas to off-shore Angola at the same time, on the same planes / tenders and with the same transit time. And in answer to the questions - most of the rigs are owned by the Angolan Government and are operated by American drilling companies so I've no idea what the tax flow is with these. We just collect stuff in, usually, Lagos, and fly it down to Luanda where we hire tenders to deliver to the rigs - whether its cream cakes, toilet rolls or drill bits, anything in fact which is needed with a degree of urgency.
And the bit about once inside the EU, everything moves about quite efficiently.
Well, one of the reasons that the Dutch like the EU is that about 75+% of imports into the EU pass through Rotterdam, and the Dutch get to keep 20% of Tariffs collected on behalf of the EU. That's a lot of jobs and a lot of money from Tariffs fixed by the EU, not the Dutch, and why a NEXIT is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
As for efficiencies, yes of course there are time saving efficiencies moving stuff across borders inside the EU - but the 'old' TIR system coped quite well for decades. And an example of how these efficiencies are there for manufacturers, not for the public -
THe BMW Mini Plant in Oxford receives about 170 inbound trucks each day with components from all over Europe, which arrive in crates called ' gitterboxes ' all the same size, spec, etc, so that they can be handled uniformly once inside the Oxford Plant. The trucks then return back to Europe with nothing but empty gitterboxes from the previous deliveries to use for the next deliveries. Meanwhile, the finshed cars are then exported by a combination of road / rail / ship back into Europe.
Now this obviously suits BMW, but do you really believe that all these inefficiencies aren't factored into the price of a Mini when you buy it ? If you buy Spanish grown fruit and vegetables, do you really believe that you're only paying for the truck to bring them from Spain, and not for the empty truck returning to Spain ?
So all of us consumers are already paying for ( or should I say contributing to ) inefficient Supply Chains which more and more manufacturers use for their own benefit rather than for the benefit of us consumers because it's now easier to move 'stuff' around inside the EU.
