Democracy Digest: The European Commission’s Motley Crew

It is easy to take exception to the "infelicitous semantic choice" of ditsy new job titles that "reflect a sense of detachment from European realities", as one EU law professor put it to The Guardian.

Pity the commissioner who must inscribe "Executive Vice-President of Europe Fit for the Digital Age" on her business card — or "Vice-President for Protecting Our European Way of Life" (more on that in a minute).

But what really rankled was the appointment of commissioners with less-than-sparkling references for "the European Way".

Most of the provocative selections come from Central and Southeast Europe, where politicians were ignored for the EU's top jobs after European Parliament elections in May.

Now commission appointees from the bloc's younger member states will face the white-hot glare of parliamentary scrutiny before being confirmed or rejected.

Let's take them one at a time.

Hungary's former justice minister, Laszlo Trocsanyi. Photo: EPA/STEPHANIE LECOCQ

'Fox in the henhouse'

News that Laszlo Trocsanyi, former Hungarian justice minister, bagged the role of EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy delighted media loyal to Hungary's illiberal premier, Viktor Orban.

It appalled critics.

The job spec penned by von der Leyen in her "mission letter" to Trocsanyi instructs him to focus "on rule of law, the fight against corruption and the role of an independent media and civil society".

But as Edit Inotai writes for Reporting Democracy, Trocsanyi was justice minister when unprecedented EU rule-of-law procedures were launched against Budapest.

Though he was never a member of Orban's ruling Fidesz party, "he served the government loyally and did everything to defend it from the...