Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

I mean, how many regular people voted for Boris Johnson as PM, for example. The answer is exactly 0.

That's just how parliamentary democracy works.

what? This opinion seems to be highly uninformed about how the EU and it's actual bodies work. i can vote for EU elections and representatives in the european parlement. Also the european commision and the council consist of either parties elected in the national elections, or national leaders themselves. Also, the european parlement uses quantitative representation, which means smaller nations have a larger say compared to larger ones.

>This dual identity has been a boon in some political situations in the past, but it is also a serious liability. Von der Leyen got the job in a usual way for a treaty organization, but she is much more political than some technocrat. There are factions that like it each way, and her job is to play both ends against the middle.

What dual identity? The european community has had a parlement since the 70's, and the european project has been a political union since it's very beginning in the 50's. You seem to assume that van der leyen has vast political power on her own, but the EU is far to decentralized for that. The EU is is a complex political system because it is highly decentralised. (which in terms is happening because all it's members are sovereign).

>You don't need a democratic mandate to appoint the head of a civil service. You definitely do when choosing the leader of the (de facto) government!

This democratic process exists, as explained above. not having direct representation is not the issue here. The way of elections in the EU is roughly the same as what happens in most if not all EU member states. (with the exception of mainly the UK).

During the endless Brexit debates in the UK prior to the referendum itself, IIRC the more credible analysis tended to have the EU27 combined losing more than the UK in absolute economic terms, maybe even twice as much, in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

The argument was made that the EU could afford to take that bigger hit anyway and was still in the stronger position in negotiations, because as you say even a somewhat greater cost would be distributed over many more people.

Then the counter-argument was that the distribution of any costs to the EU would be far from uniform. For example, one member state in the EU27 was all but guaranteed a catastrophic outcome if there is a no-deal Brexit: Ireland. This is part of the reason the NI border issue was such a sensitive topic during the negotiations. But more generally, some member states are much more dependent on the UK than others, or more dependent than others in some specific area(s). Another common examples is that the Mediterranean tourism destinations get a huge amount of revenue from the Brits each summer (under normal circumstances at least, maybe not so much this year) and in certain cases this represents a significant fraction of their entire national economy.

The EU and the Europhile leaders that most of the larger member states have had in recent times have been very good at showing a united front when it comes to Brexit, but as we've seen with other issues like the immigration/refugee situation and the pandemic, that solidarity can rapidly give way to realpolitik when times get tough. A lot of the EU27 member states are going to take a hit if we leave the transition period with no deal at the end of the year, and I wonder how well their faith in and support of the EU will hold up once real money and real jobs start being lost on both sides of the Channel.

At this point, I do not expect there to be a deal, at least not a comprehensive one that is useful for the long term, by the end of this year. It won't surprise me at all if the cracks start appearing on the EU side soon afterwards, though whether they will spread as quickly and as deeply as those likely to form concurrently in the UK is anyone's guess. It also won't surprise me at all if some important issues that are, in theory at least, EU competences start to get dealt with more directly by national governments looking to protect their own interests. Time will tell.