A vague similarity with the way the French "Communautés de Communes" are being built up is the reliance on indirect democracy.

With the population boom of the 20th century, and the very small nature of the French municipalities, the larger agglomerations now contain many commune - maybe 500 for the Paris area, and dozens for the larger provincial towns. Many public service, that'd make no sense to operate at the municipality level in those agglomeration - water, garbage disposal, public transportation, stadium building, etc... - are operated at the communauté de commune level, in an institution that shares the tax base of the individual municipalities.

It's the mayors that rule those institutions ; but as citizens, when electing mayors, don't necessarily take into account the projects of the communauté. And are surprised when their municipality gets chosen to build the local garbage dump.

The problem is, again, the indirect democracy that is also found at the European level. How many voters take into account what the candidates will do in secondary functions, such as what the president will do as the European senator ? There can be many much more pressing issues to determine oneself on.

Hey, how may people actually even know of the Council of the EU ?

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères