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A European leader, Angela Merkel, noted during a speech to the U.S. Congress in 2009 that, with the Lisbon amendment ratified, the EU “will become stronger and more capable of acting, and so a strong and reliable partner for the United States.”  The amendment deals with the EU’s governance, adjusting its political processes and institutions so as to streamline governance.  For example, there would be a President of the European Council and a Foreign Minister of the EU. Furthermore, not every State would have a commissioner in the EU.   The state governments’ chief executives would appoint the President of the European Council (whereas the President of the U.S. Senate is the elected Vice President of the union).

Because democratic principles are more difficult to apply at the empire-scale of the U.S. and E.U., it makes sense to have the representatives at the state level appoint the federal offices.  This is a basic principle of confederations, which have typically been at the empire-level. This may well seem strange from a contemporary American standpoint.  However, we could also be criticized for being vulnerable to the excesses possible in representative democracy spread too thin.  After all, the state offices are elected.  If we don’t trust them to make such appointments, we shouldn’t have elected them in the first place.  It seems to me that the Europeans have a more measured and prudent stance concerning the structure of their multi-level governance system in this regard.   Even so, the Europeans tend to have trouble coming to grips with the division of governmental sovereignty already extant in the EU federal system.  For example, already 67% of the EU competencies (enumerated powers) are by qualified majority voting, and therefore represent a significant shift in governmental sovereignty from the state level to the EU.  Apparently ignoring this state of affairs, Klaus of the Czech state claims that “the Czech Republic will cease to be a sovereign state.”  The already-existing extent of qualified majority rule in the EU means that Klaus’ state government is already no longer a sovereign state.   So problems on both sides of the Atlantic are evident.   Perhaps by studying each other’s systems, both can be strengthened.

Sources: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4853565,00.html ;  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/europe/04europe.html?_r=1&ref=world